


Underwatch

by DROLLmaeosaur



Category: Overwatch (Video Game), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, Everybody hates Jesse McCree, F/M, Gratuitous Hasslehoff, Hanzo shows up eventually I swear, Human Winston, I got distracted, It started out with a ship how did it end up like this, Jaeger Pilots, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pacific Rim - Freeform, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-08-24 09:17:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8366800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DROLLmaeosaur/pseuds/DROLLmaeosaur
Summary: They came out of the sea. The monsters. Kaiju - was the word used by the Japanese when they the first breached the surface and attacked Yokohama. It didn’t take humanity long to strike back with monsters of their own.





	1. The Hangar

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise they nearly destroyed the hangar when they’d finally tried to drift.

Winston’s glasses bobbed up and down the bridge of his nose as he worked a finger beneath the wire frame. A force of habit more than a hope of easing the growing pain between his eyes.

' _Weapons system offline. Jaeger override successful._ ’

Athena’s omnipresent voice echoed unevenly against what was left of the roof.

A dark part of him that still had enough humor to bother supplied: _Well, at least now we’ve disproved the theory of transitive drift compatibility?_ That part sounded more than a bit like Angela.

When his thumb came up to rub circles in his temples as well his glasses clattered off of his face and onto the console. He didn’t bother to pick them up.

“They managed not to completely cave the roof in, that’s something hmm?” Ana’s smooth voice didn’t entirely disguise the acerbic tone beside him as she swiveled her chair to the side enough to kick her feet up. Even with her shortened stature and the thinning out of the military musculature she’d once had, her sprawl of limbs was only mock-careless. She still occupied just as much, and as imposing, a space.

Probably more so.

Winston’s hand melted down over his face to cover his eyes completely, though they were shut anyway. He trusted Ana’s feet not to stomp over his glasses in her effort to appear at ease. “We don’t exactly have the time for taking solace in small victories.”

“I’d say that’s about all we have time for these days.” She said it with the same matronly, all-knowing tone, but the humor was decidedly dark. They were all dealing with things differently.

He let loose the sigh that had been building for some time. It was the only remnant left from the gasps, then screams then curses that had all been near things building in his throat as he’d watched the trial in the Jaeger hangar go from bad to worse to whatever adjective best described a hole blown through several thousand dollars worth of architectural contracting.

Of course they’d blasted apart the roof. What had seemed like such a sound, logical decision at the time was so obviously the last ditch attempt of desperate people looking at it now. That’s what they all were. But the clear light of day filtering down through the newly-blasted hole in the ceiling might have had something to do with the finality that edged this particular failure.

Any rational second thought should have made it abundantly clear that the drift was doomed to fail. Men so drastically different would never be able to truly share the intimate, indefinable bond that would allow them to share the same mental space they needed to occupy. Even if, as his earlier bout of humor had reminded him, transitive property would suggest that if A and B were related in a way and B and C were related in the same way that A and C would logically fall into place… He needed to remind himself, apparently, that people weren’t math. Considering how little they still understood about the drift and it’s implications, there were an infinite amount of variables.’

He’d done the hangar a disservice in forgetting that in his haste, to say nothing of the two men debarking what might have been their Jaeger.

It was easier to think of it as the blank slate that it was now that they’d removed the paint. They should have done it years ago.

McCree was struggling to get his helmet off. His arm always did have a tendency to act up after a drift, even a failed one, evidently. When Fareeha came forward onto the mezzanine from the observation deck to help him with the clasps at his jawline, he practically ripped the face shield off in his haste. The man shook his rumpled, sweat-damp hair from his face like a dog just surfacing from a dip in a particularly unpleasant lake.

It was a fitting analogy all around.

“I need a drink. A strong one. Maybe five.” His voice had a harsher tone, rougher around the edges even than his usual colloquial drawl. He glanced down at his distorted reflection in the helmet, brows furrowed and heavy over his eyes. He grimaced at whatever he saw there. “And my goddamn hat.”

Zarya’s voice echoed as much as her heavy footfalls down the galvanized steel of the stairways. “That bad, ah?” She was laughing and her wide grin did something to help McCree’s mood, his mouth pulled into something of a smile at least as she skipped the last two steps in a bounding jaunt to the platform with them.

Fareeha glanced up at the hole above them. “Probably… worse. I’d wager.”

“Yes ma’am.” McCree was still looking at the helmet as if it was going to answer him an unasked question.

He didn’t look up until his would-be co-pilot emerged from the Jaeger. The man jumped the distance from the torso cockpit to the platform and stalked off in the direction of the barracks. His footfalls were no heavier than they were in the stocky suit boots on the walk into the Jaeger an hour or so before, but there was a tension in his shoulders and the set of his arms far beyond the usual confident, soldier’s posture. All three of them could see it, even he hadn’t bothered to take his faceplate off.

McCree is sure that Winston and Ana could see it from the bridge above them too. Sure that, in whatever notes the Commander had taken on this session he’d scratched “DRIFT INCOMPATIBLE” between the last combination of names on his that damned list of his: ‘Jesse McCree’ and ‘Jack Morrison’.

“Maybe six drinks.” Said McCree.

Winston had done just that, after having retrieved his glasses from the console. He pressed too hard onto the page with the pen and the nib ripped through the paper on the downstroke of the second ‘T.’

“So where does this leave us?”

Ana laughed. A single sharp note. “Us? The same place as before. Safe and hidden away in our little bit of Atlantic paradise while the Pacific coast burns. Well, not burns precisely but...”

He looked at her and she raised her eyebrows back at him, as though she couldn’t even manage an accompanying shrug. “What did you want me to say?” She asked.

The commander’s hands were restless and he ran one up through his hair, stopping this time to worry at the skin of his neck just beneath the collar of his uniform rather than his face. He was sure he didn’t need any more wrinkles there anyway. 

“Honestly? I have no idea.” Winston didn’t quite manage the laugh he felt she wanted.

“Well Commander, the pedantic answer to your question is ‘in need of pilots’.”

Winston grimaced and fought against the urge to roll his eyes. He didn’t doubt that she could read the discourse on his face. Still, he’d play her game. Ana was going somewhere, he could only hope.

“That’s not a good place to be.” He offered in retort. “New Zealand was in need of pilots. Hawaii was in need of pilots. Japan was in need of pilots after the debacle off of Hanamura. Nobody lives in those places anymore Ana. Nobody human.”

She closed her eye. The look she was going for was warped slightly because of the eyepatch, but what she did manage was just as effective. She hummed softly in acknowledgement. “Yes. Those were all tragedies. Sudden, unforeseen tragedies. But on the subject of Hanamura. You’ll remember that only one of the Shimada brothers actually qualified and completed military pilot training. The younger only got in because he was able to drift with his brother.”

Winston actually did roll his eyes this time. “Of course I do, I read their file. Even if I wasn’t the one in charge back-”

Ana didn’t open her eye, but held up a finger to stop him. “So correct me if I’m wrong, Commander… You aren’t in need of jaeger pilots, per se. You’re in need of people, who can drift with your pilots.”

Her eye opened to meet Winston’s pair. There was a pause and then Ana shifted, putting her feet back properly on the floor and rising to stand.

“Athena, do you still have all the files of the applicants who failed to make it through pilot training? I may be getting on in years but I think my memory is still good. It was quite a large stack of paper.” She laughed and it grated like a scratch in her throat but she kept her eye on Winston. “Some of them might even still be alive.”

‘ _T_ _hey have since been digitized Vice Commander Amari, but yes. I do have them on record_.’

“Queue them up please Athena.” Ana asked. “The Commander will be needing them.”

‘ _Retrieving data_.’

The files came one by one at first. Pictures and bios and statistics each with a derisive red stamp of failure. Soon Athena was pulling them at a speed neither of them could follow on the screen.

“Thank you Athena.” Winston said, though his eyes had lost their focus on the screens. Looking not at one but the collection as a whole. He’d be up all night with this, but at least the sheer number gave him hope than an overlooked needle might hide somewhere in the hay.

Ana had probably foreseen that conclusion from the outset. “Well… at least the world won’t be able to say we didn’t try if we run out of co-pilot pairs now.”

Winston did actually laugh at that. One sharp, guttural ‘hmph’. “They’ve been telling us to stop trying for years.”

“Precisely. Wouldn’t want them to think we’ve gone soft after these last few.”

The commander turned back to look at her, the crooked smile on her face made the tattoo below her eye crinkle more that it normally did lately.

“I’ll leave you to your work Commander. I’ll fetch Fareeha and we can get to work on fixing that dent the boys put in the ceiling. If we use Justice Reign to lift-”

“Ana.”

Winston tried to say her name like a command, but it was too soft around the edges and they both heard it. “You can’t be serious. Torbjorn and Reinhard can handle the hangar repairs. Zarya can assist if necessary.”

“It will be quicker with a Jaeger doing the heavy lifting.”

“You are not getting in a Jaeger for anything but a kaiju. Nothing else is worth the risk.” He sighed. “That was the agreement was it not?” A man his size, and several decades her junior, he was nearly taller than her even sitting. But it was times like these that he didn’t feel he was nearly strong enough to face her down.

For a moment it looked as though she had something to say.

The moment passed.

“Yes. Yes it was.” There was a note of resignation there in her voice. It was a bitter taste in both their mouths. “I must have forgotten.”

She moved past him to exit the bridge, her footsteps soft and silent as a ghost’s. He’d thought, miraculously, that he’d made it out of the exchange rather well.

Ana stopped in the doorway. Of course he was wrong about that as well today.

“Wouldn’t want to see anything happen to your only operational pilot team, would you, Commander?”

The emphasis her words gave the situation were unnecessary, but had the effect she no doubt was after. She was a soldier. She would obey orders. But she wouldn’t be dismissed without a reminder. The reason he was in charge. Not her. Not Jack. They were the ones who went out to face the demons at humanity’s door, not to the one who sat cozy and dry in Gibraltar.

And since Jack could no longer drift… She and Fareeha were the last two. And even that had an expiration date.

Winton slumped in his seat. Big man that he was, there was only so far that he could slide down into the chair before the entire action seemed even more petulant and useless than it already felt.

Maybe this was why most of the world had given up on Underwatch. 

His fingers drummed over the console as he eyed the folder Athena had brought up for him from the backlog of her memory.

He could only hope a few names on this list weren’t among them.

 

* * *

 

Despite the time difference, she wasn’t asleep when he made the call. Which, he supposed was fortunate in its way - they didn’t have time to waste. But it would have been easier to collect his thoughts and present them in a cohesive manner without being interrupted by both excited giggles and creative, colorful profanities she didn’t bother to mute when she forgot to mute her side of the line.

Once again Winston questioned whether this was truly the best course of action. What kind of person took a phone call in the middle of a tide skirmish? She wasn’t a soldier, that was obvious. Ana was insane. She didn’t have the training that would be necessary to -

 _Neither did Jesse back then and he managed just fine…_ The Ana in his head supplied.

She was right of course. McCree had made the cut through pilot’s training, but only just. And hell, he still tried to wear that damn cowboy hat instead of a proper helmet when he thought he could get away with it.

Hana exclaimed something -

“Die crab motherfuckers die! Eat shit bullets and run back to your whore crab mothers!”

The gleeful girlish exclamation came over the com link peppered with scratchy feedback. Weapons discharge filtering through the layers of technology between them - from the battle site to her and then finally to him from there.

He did the polite thing, ahem’d not in a real effort to clear his throat but to remind her of his presence on the line. 

“Keep going old guy, I’m listening!” How she could listen over what sounded like crashing waves and still more bullets he didn’t know. Maybe the sound quality was clearer on her end. “Don’t mind - I told you to STAY down when I shoot you! DOWN. That’s right! - this garbage. I can multitask. Women are better at that you know.”

“I’m aware. Now, Miss Song there is a very important reason that I’m reaching out to you-”

Several splashes and muffled thumping and cracking. It seemed as though she’d given up all pretense of shooting at the interloping spawns and chosen to move forward with the platoon’s collective fists.

“There better be - you do realize I’m working right?”

Winston rolled his eyes. Suddenly appreciative that she’d declined the video portion of their com link when she’d picked up the call.

“I realize that-”

“Then what is so important that you’d call a MEKA fleet captain in the middle of fighting an entire kaiju spawn brood?”

Likely quite a large spawning of them too - the amount of feedback alone seemed to suggest that she had at at least half a dozen units out in the shallows engaged in battle.

“I’m calling to speak to you about the Jaeger program.”

Silence over the com, perfect if not for the almost white-noise of the sea.

Then a distinct whirring, electronic and building rapidly. It was doing a number on the com link feed, static everywhere. It grew so distorted he thought he’d lost her all together for a moment before the sound of the explosion, the impact, the water and the splitting frequency of the kaiju spawnling shrieks surged through and nearly blew out his headset audio and eardrums both.

It took a few moments for his ears to stop ringing, but when they did there was true silence now. Even the water seemed still.

“...I’m listening.”

 

* * *

 Hana Song arrived in at the Watchpoint Gibraltar in less than a week. She’d offered to come even earlier but eventually relented, admitting to having minor business in Beijing that needed to be taken care of before she could transfer entirely.

“I’ve been here just long enough to have loose ends, but I can tie them up quick. I haven’t been anywhere long enough to get to comfy.” She’d said over their later call, long after she’d finished taking the checks and readings at the skirmish point and gotten the remaining MEKA of her platoon ordered and back onto the transport plane.

Winston wasn’t sure what to make of the sunny, careless way she spoke about her recent-most home. He’d read her file. Her updated file. Not the one that she’d initially sent to Reyes and Morrison as an application for the program back the initial heyday. But he refrained from any commentary. Who was he to judge anyone for the way they processed the events of the past three years?

He didn’t need to understand whatever coping methods she was using. He was just hoping that someone else at Gibraltar could. She’d be the youngest candidate they’d ever had by far, but beggars could hardly be choosers. The personalities of the pilots needed synchronicity, not their ages.

But, for possibly the first time in living memory, Winston found himself hoping that Jesse McCree was immature enough for the job.

Torbjorn and Reinhardt had gotten the scaffolding back into place on the roof and had only just started on the next stages of the repairs the morning she arrived, so everyone on base either saw or heard her plane well before the pilot called in for landing clearance. So, naturally, Hana Song was greeted by more than half the entire assembled Underwatch when she disembarked - at least those who had little enough else to occupy their time or were nosey enough to pretend they fell into the first group.

Winston by necessity and the case could be made that Ana was shadowing him as an appropriate, advising second since Jack was conspicuously absent. The others though: Wilhelm, Torbjorn, Fareeha, Zarya and Jesse were here because they wanted to be.

It was sunny and pleasant enough outside, but the jet stream from the descending aircraft kicked up enough wind and dust to shatter that illusion as it banked for a landing. It had more than a few of them coughing and sputtering, but no one fled back in doors. In the ensuing gale the girl looked impossibly younger than the image attached to her file. With her hair in tumbles and cheeks flushed pink as she wriggled out of the little jet plane and hopped the four or so feet from the cabin to the tarmac. She had to stand on her toes to reach back into the hatch to try to get at whatever luggage she had flown with in the cramped quarters, though she didn’t have to try long.

Zarya closed the distance to the plane in a few long, careless strides and reached in with one arm. She pulled one large pink and white suitcase and a single little rolling valise to match, before she glanced back through the hatch.

“This everything you bring, da?”

Hana had to look up at the massive woman who held her luggage with one arm, as though the bags were casual weights that she’d lift on her off day at home while she caught up on her reading. If the girl had looked small next to the jet, she looked positively tiny in comparison to Zarya.

“And this.” She turned to show off the similarly colored backpack she wore, though this bag was made of shiny acrylic plastic and shaped like the little bunny decal that marked the other two. “Thanks!”

And there was that kilowatt smile, the one Winston could only assume she’d been wearing when she’d spoken to him over the link. It was blinding, and more than a little terrifying, in the flesh. The expression made her pink cheeks dimple, again like a child, but the glint it sent up into her eyes was a kind of prime, ageless mischief.

Winston could only watch and speculate and wonder what he’d done.

Zarya seemed convinced.

“It is no problem. I am happy to help. You probably weigh less than your baggage. 

Hana laughed, hands on her hips, mock offended. “I’d hope so.” 

The larger woman gave her a cursory assessment, then hefted her bodily off her feet by the straps of her little bunny backpack.

She dissolved into giggles as Zarya carried her and her baggage away from the transport jet.

The pilot checked through the radio that they were finished, that he was clear to leave what he surely thought was a mad house.

“Clear for take off. We’ll be heading in now.” Ana supplied with the roundness of a chuckle in her voice.

Winston was obviously too preoccupied wondering whether or not this really was a madhouse as he watched McCree line up so that Zarya could compare him to the weight of Hana’s bags. The Russian woman tutted when she put him back down on his feet, the damn useless spurs he wore chiming his successful return to the ground.

“I don’t know Jesse… I think you’ve gotten fat.”

McCree gaped at her, then turned to the new arrival, mouth still hanging open.

“What’ve you got in there darlin’, lead bricks and horse shoes?”

Both women laughed. McCree turned to Fareeha for help, but she simply smirked as she looked on, leaning against the partition. She shrugged far too much like her mother before she crossed her arms in silence.

“You really are a cowboy!” Hana quipped, once she’d recovered from her most recent bout of laughter. Her eyes were still comically, girlishly wide as she looked up at the tall man - literally wearing the cowboy-staple hat and spurs. They had at least persuaded him to go without the chaps, at least day to day, but the worn denim and flannel he did wear as a stand-in weren’t much further off the Cecil B. Demille “Western” rack. To say nothing of that truly ridiculous belt buckle. “I almost couldn’t believe all those old rumors.”

“In the flesh lil’ lady.” He tipped his hat and offered what was surely one of his characteristically charming and roguish grins. At least he certainly liked to think so.

“But maybe next time you’re meetin’ a fella leave off the ‘old’ bit? A man’s pride can only take so much of a lashing so quick ya hear?”

Fareeha rolled her eyes.

If there was any man alive who could slough off being called fat by one woman, old by another, silently rebuked by a third and laughed at by all them, it was of course Jesse McCree.

“We need to get inside - your poor pilot probably wants to be taking off now.” Reinhardt’s baritone resonated eerie in concert with the background whirring of the jet’s idling engines, a solid octave or five lower.

“And you need to get your things settled before we can get your training started.” Zarya added, adjusting the weight of Hana’s bags over her shoulder but making no move to suggest she wouldn’t continue to carry them for her.

Hana threw a hand up into the air in an animated punch upward that pulled her into a skipping jump.

“Yes! Bring it on! When do I get my Jaeger?”

“First things first Miss Song, there’s a process.” Winston said.  “We’ve got to run you through the basic compatibility testing and we can’t start that until you’ve gotten the requisite physical testing out of the way-”

“But that might all be better explained once you’ve been settled Miss Song.” Ana interrupted, and Winston was grateful for it. He’d been getting ahead of himself.

“Quite right. Inside everyone!” He issued as an order in his best attempt to recover his Commander status.

They began filing back, as orderly a process as their hodgepodge group could make. It was a good thing that Zarya was carrying Hana’s bags after all, the girl likely would have rushed past them all in her excitement had the large woman’s load of baggage not been effectively blocking her way.

Winston ended up directly behind Torbjorn in their impromptu queue and he could hear the short, stout engineer’s slow rolling chuckles. 

“Definitely an injection of youth into this old place. Wouldn’t ya say Winston?”

“That wasn’t my intention, her credentials are very strong. Reyes was considering her for some time during the initial Underwatch call and maybe again during his Deepwatch days although who knows what he was thinking then. I believe she’ll make a fine pilot if only we can manage to find her a match. The wall guard in China was very loath to part with her. She’s their top ranked remote MEKA pilot-”

The engineer shrugged.

“Honestly, it’s nice having new blood here Commander. Gives everyone something to get excited over…”

He glanced up at the bare scaffolding.

“That won’t put holes in my roof.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that just yet Torbjorn. She and…” Ana eyed Winston side along, conveniently he was on her left side so the look she was going for actually stuck. “Jesse? Are you thinking? Well, they could just as easily blow the roof as Jesse and Jack did.”

The commentary was biting, laced just enough around the edges with humor to soften the blow. The Ana Amari special.

Torbjorn obviously hadn’t thought of that and continued his path inside grumbling now through his moustache.

Winston turned to Ana. “Aren’t you coming?”

She shrugged.

“Head in without me Commander.” Her focus shifted back to the plane. “I’ll see the pilot off and be in shortly.”

Winston looked as though he was about to say something but eventually decided against it. He turned to head in as well, as the transport jet’s pilot finally opened up the engines once again as Athena chimed ‘ _Pilot fully cleared for launch. Commence protocol for take off._ ’

The turbulence kicked the air into a swirling stir once again and Ana squinted her eye against the gusts. The pilot didn’t waste time, taking off down the jet way and out over the water with the all the efficiency the Chinese Air Force was known for and the roaring scream of the engines.

The wet spray from the sea joined the gale spinning around her. Whipping any stray wisps of her hair that it could pull from her braid. Ana coughed suddenly, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth and nose as she hacked through the episode. Her narrowed eye watched the silhouette of the craft against the glinting morning sun, watching the jet race off east into the sky until - there it was - the resounding boom crashed and the little black dot winked out of vision entirely.

It was a bit longer, and several more wet rasps, before her throat and lungs settled after their spasm. She watched the empty sky, tracked the gathering clouds on the edge of the horizon. They were quite possibly in for a storm.

Ana ran her thumb around her mouth and let her hand fall back to her side. She wiped the blood on her uniform slacks and went back in to join the others.

There was to work to do.

 

* * *

 ‘ _Transport pilot has left Watchpoint airspace._ ’

Winston nodded at Athena’s update after it came through the intercom system.

Hana, to her credit, didn’t so much as look up from where she was unzipping and rummaging around her bunny backpack she’d thrown onto her bunk once the commander had shown her to her room.“Who -what- is that?”

“That would be Athena, the artificial intelligence that operates and manages our computer network. She is instrumental to the entire Underwatch project.”

‘ _Greetings Miss Hana Song. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I have already incorporated your user data and access codes into the necessary programming. Do let me know if I can be of assistance._ ’

“Great!” This time she did look up, straightened and held out a small mobile device in her hand. The case, of course, matched the bunny theme. She held it aloft, presumably for Athena to see. Winston could have told her that the gesture was unnecessary but he was guilty of similar actions himself. She’d either figure it out for herself or keep doing it out of the same habit most of the rest of them had fallen into.

“Can you get me an internet connection?” She paused, her eyes suddenly going wide with unanticipated horror. “Wait… there IS internet here right?”

Once Athena had assured her that, yes, there was of course internet access at the Watchpoint and enabled her phone to link with the connections, Hana was back to her previously relaxed posture. She leaned a shoulder against the wall frame and crossed a leg over the other, her face lit by the soft blue light of her phone screen and her thumbs tapped furiously over the screen.

Winston paused a beat, then two.

“Well Miss Song, I’ll leave you to get settled.” Her eyes never left her phone screen, but she nodded. “Time is of the essence but I understand if you would like to unpack and rest a short while before we continue on with-”

“No, I’m ready.” She held up her phone, as if the text and the blue and white icons meant something to him. It was her turn to wait. She managed about the half the time that he had. “My tweets sent big guy, now I’m ready to go!

Winston furrowed his big eyebrows down. “You don’t wish to take a few hours?”

“I’m good!” She slipped her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and tucked her hands into the bubblegum pink hoodie she was wearing. Hana dipped around him and out of her room, looking back as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “You said it yourself ‘time is of the essence’!” The girl quoted in a not-at-all-accurate impression of him.

McCree could manage a fair one, actually. When he cared to.

“I can sleep when I’m dead… Or old.”

Winston wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, even a very excitable gift horse that was likely to give him the migraine to end all headaches across the bridge of his nose.

“So - do I get to go see my Jaeger now?” Hana buzzed excitedly as the pair of them walked down the corridor. Winston wasn’t use to walking with someone who ran circles around him. Literally. The hallways were wide, but he the commander was a large man, if he ever encountered the any of the other broader-shouldered members of Underwatch going the opposite way they would both have to turn sideways to accommodate each other.

“Not, exactly Miss Song.”

“I thought you had Jaegers just sitting around?”

“We do, yes, but pilot matching is a very complex process we only understand on the shallowest of levels.”

“But what if a kaiju attacks while you’re… running whatever tests you’re running on me. I’m the top ranked MEKA pilot on the hottest skirmish point on the Pacific Wall!” She skipped ahead of him and pulled her little tablet out of her pocket and flicked a her fingers across it in sequence. Then she stopped and held it up to him so abruptly his face nearly collided with the screen.

“I have more followers on twitter than most remaining world governments. That’s got to mean something!”

“Yes, Miss Song it does.” He closed his eyes against the bright blue light of her screen. Winston sighed. He’d been doing that a lot lately and it didn’t seem as though that would be changing anytime soon. Maybe he should take up smoking those cigarillos McCree was trying to kill himself with just so he could make the gesture more obvious each time it inevitably rolled around. “But we currently have a very skilled Jaeger team that is more than capable of handling whatever kaiju the Pacific throws at us. Those large enough to threaten the Pacific wall do not show up with frequencies that have overwhelmed Justice Reign.”

In a gesture he was unashamed to admit he stole from Ana, he raised a hand to keep her from interrupting him as he bridged to his next thought. He almost wished she could be here to see him.

“That could change, yes. We don’t know enough about the kaiju to guess at what the future might hold. So we will be ready. That’s why you’re here.”

“I’m ready now!”

There was that sigh again. Winston reached around her as they neared the end of the corridor to open the hatch to the hangar and usher her through.

She didn’t need the encouragement.

Even the soft-soled, stylish high-tops she wore made the metal of the mezzanine ramps ring as she ran out against the railings. “Which one do I get?”

Winston looked out at the Jaegers that waited there in the hangar, massive silent sentinels catching odd shadows from the natural light that streamed down through the open parts of the ceiling. With the repairs started, the bare scaffolding cast cross-latched shadows down on them like a net. Or bars. It was an unpleasant image that was utterly lost on the nineteen year old that looked on.

Justice Reign occupied Dock 1, cerulean and gold and as regal as the hawkish profile demanded. Like some ancient, sleeping god that needed only to be awoken by the faithful. She was armed and outfitted and ready for whenever the alarms called to her.

The Jaeger in Dock 2 looked like a husk by comparison. That’s rather what it was. It was a pristine, gunmetal grey that glinted in the shine and shadow that struck it in the alternating pattern. It wasn’t Helix Halo anymore and it never would be again.

It would have a new name and new pilots.

Dock 3 also housed a decommissioned, unpainted Jaeger. Most of one. There were parts that looked unfinished, as though it was still under construction or at least under very intensive repairs. It was missing the left arm.

No more questions came from Hana as Winston slowly caught up with her. She must have answered her own question. He was grateful for her silence. The memories came unbidden each time he saw the Jaegers. There was no avoiding that. But not having to talk about events that put them there was a blessing.

Hana turned back to face him, her eyes alight with the fire her youth afforded her. “When I pilot that Jaeger, I want it painted pink.”

Their first stop was Angela’s: the med bay turned laboratory turned… whatever moniker best fit Angela’s recent most project at any given time. After the public fallout and and the all-but-complete disband of the program, the stubborn few of them that remained all wore more hats now than was probably healthy. Angela Zeigler was no different, even if she was more of a halo than a hat kind of person.

Certainly more deserving of the halo image than Reyes ever had been.

“Commander! And you must be Miss Song!” Her eyes darted between the two new arrivals into her space and the pretty blond woman stood from the chair where she’d been sitting, assumedly hard at work on something on her computer screen. Her pale blond hair was in disarray, the real kind. The look that only came from several back-to-back hours of pushing it out of one’s face absentmindedly, not the so-called “artful equivalent”. 

“I didn’t expect you for another few hours, maybe not even until tomorrow. I’m sorry I’m still in the middle of a little side project - I’ve discovered some very interesting software out of Kathmandu that may better allow me to study the drift and its relation to the human consciousness.” She swept back over to the monitor and tapped out whatever thought she’d been in the middle of when they’d interrupted her. “I can be ready for you in just a moment Miss Song.”

“You know you could all call me Hana? This ‘Miss Song’ thing is getting ridiculous.” Hana crossed her arms over her chest.

“Very well, Hana it is. Please to make your acquaintance.” The woman had a genuine, if harried, manner.

“Miss- Hana.” Winston corrected himself. “This is Dr. Zeigler. She is serves as both chief medical officer to Underwatch as well as our resident kaiju biologist. She is one of the three scientists we have on base as part of the remaining Underwatch team.”

Dr. Zeigler smiled. “It’s hardly all that, although I do keep busy.” She held out a hand to Hana. “But please call me Angela. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Hana took it, shook her hand absently as she swept her focus around the lab. It was crowded, but oddly organized, stately and well-managed with that undeniably sterile feel anything with ‘medical’ or ‘hospital’ in the name seemed to have.

“You are here for your introductory physical, correct?”

“I guess so... “ Hana turned to the Commander, looking up at the tall man through her bangs. “Do I really have to? Isn’t this just a waste of time? You have my file and didn’t whoever’s in charge of the MEKA units back at the wall send over all my recent information? If they didn’t I can just call and bug them for it. They’d better do it after all I’ve done-”

Angela saved Winston from having to explain. “There are certain physical markers they would not have checked for. The Jaegers are an entirely different level of human interface than your MEKA were - even the most recent line that you’ve been using in the past few months with the improved neural interface. It might seem like a small difference, the basic robotics and weapons systems are indeed similar between the two, but there’s very little else shared between the their control-link systems.

“The Jaegers are an entirely different uplink system. It all stems from the size really. The MEKA units are so small, comparatively. The only way to avoid delay between the pilot and the machine action on so much larger a scale was to create a direct neural link between the the pilot and the Jaeger… Well pilots, plural. Since the strain of such a large mass can’t be managed by one, respectively tiny human brain, the two pilot system was implemented. Which of course introduces the variable of both another brain and the connection between the two of them and the relationship of both to the Jaeger systems. Three points that must all sync properly with one another.”

Angela sketched a triangle in the air with two fingers, which were somehow immaculately manicured.

“As such it’s incredibly delicate. There are entire hosts of reasons that a person might not be able to manage such a link and that only includes the ones we can actually quantify, let alone understand. And that’s not even considering the factors that may or may not allow two people to drift with each other. We still don’t entirely understand and I’m not sure if we’ll ever understand the drift process and all it entails.”

Hana blinked.

Winston took the opportunity her uncharacteristic silence offered him. Angela was truly a treasure beyond compare. “Well, I’ll leave you to your work Dr. Ziegler. I would appreciate your assessment as quickly as possible, you know the state of our organization.”

He turned to look back down at Hana. “That being said Mi- Hana, once you’re done you really should take the remainder of the day to rest.”

The realization of his rank once again seemed to catch back up with him. “In fact, consider it an order. You’ll want as much of a night’s sleep as you can manage before we turn you loose to Zarya tomorrow.”

“The pink haired, russian lady?” Hana seemed to have recovered from Angela’s data overload, at least for now. “She’s not a pilot though, unless all those kaiju-junkie wanna-be pilot neckbeards got their facts wrong on all the forums I was reading.”

Angela looked over to Winston. “Neck.. beards…? I don’t...?”

Winston shrugged.

“Zarya is our physical trainer. She was never a Jaeger pilot, although it was a near thing.” Angela paused, realized that she’d said perhaps a bit too much. “It is her story to tell, specifically, but she was injured in one of the early kaiju attacks back before we knew even the little that we know now.”

Hana crossed her arms and looked wary of another flood of information from the doctor but said nothing.

“Kaiju blood, what you probably know as ‘kaiju blue’, has strange effects on the human brain. It is of course incredibly and immediately toxic to humans in the field, that much was clear immediately.”

The younger woman nodded. Hence the reason that they fought even the defensive battles with the smaller kaiju broodlings along the Pacific Wall zones remotely, letting the MEKA take the damage from the phosphorescent goop. Even with all the advancements in shields and biopolymers the engineers tried, it ate through everything eventually. At least MEKA were replaceable.

She appreciated the fact that the doctor didn’t vomit an entire lecture at her she already, obviously knew.

“Zarya had no outward symptoms after her encounter with kaiju blue, so she was dismissed after the initial medical checks. We of course later learned of the properties of kaiju blue and the speed at which it aerosolizes.”

Hana’s eyes widened.

“You see the problem.” Angela smiled down at Hana, who nodded. The doctor’s age showed around the edges of her eyes and the lines of her mouth. “It was minor, somehow. She very likely survived only because was in, literally, peak physical condition. But the chemicals did leach past the blood-brain barrier and did irreversible damage. It affected something intrinsic to the drift process. She is officially drift incompatible. On a physiological level.”

Even hearing the abbreviated version of the story now almost made Winston shudder. Angela saw it. Zarya had been such a promising recruit. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to wipe the image of the look on her face when Angela had given her the diagnosis after the third failed drift attempt.

Winston had a lot of memories like that. Versions of friends trapped forever in whatever anguished tableau of their life he’d chosen to pin up on his mental wall to gather dust. He kept the door closed to that space and didn’t look upon them often, but when he chanced the thought of one, the rest of them inevitably were dragged along.

Misery did love company. Some old adages never died. Just fermented and grew more bitter.

“But she’s so crazy strong!” Both Angela and Winston felt the same pang at Hana’s outrage on Zarya’s behalf, despite the fact that the girl had only met the woman today. Maybe more so because of that. “You just said she survived Kaiju blue! I bet she doesn’t need to drift! If anyone could pilot a Jaeger by herself it would be her-”

“NO ONE-

The Commander’s interruption came like a roar, something bordering on animal and quickly crossing. Angela had seen it before and she reacted only a fraction less than Hana. He reigned in the volume before he spoke again, but the tone hadn’t lightened in any manner.

“No one pilots by themselves.”

Both women stared at him. Until something else caught their attention. The doctor’s eyes darted to the side where one of the internal doors of the med bay slid automatically open. The steps out of it were soft, barefoot. They were only audible to anyone because of the silence that fell after Winston’s bellowed command and the carelessness of the walker whose feet slapped against the cool white tiles.

The woman who’d wandered in had a huge, sunny smile that could have put Hana to shame… if the other girl could have managed one right then. She wore comfortable clothes as though she’d just come from a run or a workout, though she didn’t appear sweaty or exerted. They were worn, not threadbare but broken in and fit like they belonged where they were, hugging an angle or wrinkled over a particular curve of her body. Her auburn hair was a riot of chunky, tousled locks.

Her wide, guileless eyes found the large form the commander and her smile opened.

“Winston? Is that you love? It’s been too long!”

She took off towards them in a sudden sprint, closing the short distance in a few long-legged strides.

Hana had a split second moment to catch the look on Winston’s face before the strange woman threw herself into his arms and disrupted the image.

She hadn’t liked at all what she’d seen there.

His bulky form closed around the woman as the big man returned the hug tightly.

“Yes, yes it has.”

“Oh! Wonderful to see you, we should go outside! Take a spin maybe? Telly says it’s supposed to be gorgeous today.”

They broke apart sooner than Hana’d have expected and the same bright eyes turned on her.

“You must be new here, eh?” The woman extracted herself from Winston’s embrace and gave her a comically casual salute. “Cheer’s luv, I’m Lena. You are…?”

“Hana. Hana Song.” She almost had time to be offended. “I thought that Winston had informed everyone here that I was-”

“Lena, what do you think of Manchester’s chances in the Premier League this season?” Winston asked, his voice level and conversational. His smile even met his eyes if you didn’t look too hard. “Southampton and Tottenham are looking better and better. Do you think there could be an upset this year?” 

At that Lena moued at him, she swatted at the commander’s shoulder playfully. “Winston! This is why you can’t just fall out of touch for so long. The Mancs have been rubbish ever since they lost that bloke up from Italy to Chelsea last year! It was all over the news. Have you been living under a rock?”

“Something like that.”

She put her hands on her hips and stuck a determined, wide-legged stance. “Ugh, well. We’ll have to get you back into the swing of things won’t we then? Let’s go and play a bit, yeah? Like old times?”

“I’d like that.”Winston offered in reply. “If you don’t mind playing with an old man.”

“Pssh!” The sound was strange coming from her high-pitched, heavily accented voice. “Pish posh. Footy’s for every’un in’it?” That line certainly sounded perfectly par though.

Her head darted abruptly to the side. A jerking violence to the sudden motion that had no predicate and put Hana’s hackles up. She was reminded of nothing so much as a rabbit, after suddenly having caught wind of a predator in the vicinity but if Lena heard or saw anything it was a mystery to Hana.  

The woman relaxed eventually, as if the bundle of batteries she’d been running on were starting to die. Lena cocked her head to the side deflated a bit as she seemed to think upon something that interrupted whatever this vague plan entailed. “Oh, but telly says it’s supposed to be rubbish outside today…”

Winston patted her on the shoulder, his hand nearly covering one side entirely when he curled his boxy fingers in and gave a squeeze.

She brought up a comparatively tiny hand and patted his. “Maybe next time yeah? Bit tired anyway, I think.”

And she looked it then, the yawn that followed her finished thought didn’t look at all forced or manufactured.

Lena threw herself into Winston’s arms fully for another hug. “Just promise it won’t be so long until I see you next.” The emotion in her voice was as natural as the yawn had been.

“Of course Lena.”

She took a few steps backwards when he released her and she gave him one of those salute-gestures identical to the one she’d offered Hana before she turned and walked back to the room she’d bounded out of. “And maybe next time you can introduce me to your friends, yeah?”

The commander watched her until the door closed behind her. He coughed once. Twice.

“Well, Miss Song I leave you in Dr. Ziegler’s capable hands. Again, Angela the sooner you can get that report to me or Athena the better. I really can’t stress that enough.”

Once again the doctor looked old when she smiled. “Of course, Commander.”

Hana had sense enough to wait until he too had left to ask, though Winston exited the doors back to the main hallways of the complex to go about whatever Commander-y business he had waiting for him.

“Why doesn’t he come see her more often? Is he really that busy? She seems…” Her eyes glanced back at the door, behind which she could only assume the woman still was. Somewhere. “Really attached to him.”

Angela laughed, and she was even worse at getting the feeling into her eyes than Winston had been.

“He came to see her yesterday.”

 

* * *

The testing was extensive, but Angela was efficient and economical. She made sure to get every reading she needed from whatever equipment she’d hooked into or up to Hana in a logical order that streamlined the entire process.

It still felt like a long time though until Hana Song made it back to her room in the bunks. She unpacked her bags, pulled out her phone so she could stream the newest show out of Rio while she worked and then crawled into the bed she’d made and tried to rest.

Angela’s green check mark of approval on the reports she’d compiled and the congratulatory “Well… Everything checks out here. Medically, you should be able to pilot and drift just fine.” were less comforting than she’d thought they’d be.

 

* * *

 Reinhardt cooked that night. Fareeha had offered to take over since he and Torbjorn had done more work that day than any of the rest of them had, with the exclusion possibly of McCree and Morrison. Though the task of destruction was, as the saying went, infinitely easier than that of creation… maybe they should have made the two of them make dinner. The team work practice could only improve their potential drift compatibility, probably.

 That or break all of the dishes in the galley and probably some of the stainless steel cookware.

At the very least.

Not to mention the fact that someone would have actually had to broach the suggestion to Jack. And even among their fringe organization, when the rest of the world thought they were insane rebels with high-octane death wishes all of them, not a one of them valued their life so little as to volunteer.

“I’d be more willin’ to cook **and** do the dishes all by my lonesome before I’d bother Morrison with that idea in particular.”

McCree had griped before he realized, in the pregnant pause that followed his words while he sucked down an easy third of his bottle of just-opened beer, exactly what he’d done.

He groaned. “I just volunteered myself for exactly that, didn’t I?”

“No need to worry Jesse.” Reinhardt smiled. “It is my day, so I will still be doing the cooking.” His smile was a little too wide for McCree to feel as though he’d gotten off the hook entirely.

“But I DO get to pick the music while I work.”

Both Fareeha and McCree groaned. The dark haired woman turned to glare at McCree.

“What darlin’? What’dyou want me to do?” He shrugged animatedly upward, beer in one hand.

Fareeha opened her mouth to no doubt suggest something, if the way she raised a finger between them was any indication but was cut off by the rising volume of grainy quality audio from Athena’s speakers.

“Danke Athena.”

‘ _Bitte Wilhelm_.’ Athena chimed back before fading into the opening german lines of the damn song.

He glanced down at his beer for moment before he downed the rest in one suck. Everyone in Gibraltar had it out for Jesse McCree.

“Don’t pout Jesse. The look doesn’t do you any favors.” Satya scolded with the characteristic brusqueness to the otherwise gorgeous round syllables of her occasionally accented words. The soft tap of the sensible heels she favored heralded her movements as she entered the mess hall and immediately fetched the kettle out of the meticulously ordered cupboards and shelves - Ana’s doing. She’d gone through with them with a roll masking tape, a sharpie marker and a long string of muttered curses about ‘children’ after the third time McCree, or had it been Zarya that time, had put something away in the wrong place and an infuriated Torbjorn had stormed out into hall bellowing curses about anyone over six feet tall.

Satya filled the kettle. “Is there room on the stove, please, Reinhardt?”

“Ja. The knockwurst are almost done anyway. Oh and I have some lovely lentils with caraway over there for you.” He nodded at her with a wide smile and took the kettle she’d filled from her to place it on the burner. “Pleased you are able to join us this evening.”

Satya returned his smile with a much more demure one of her own and moved to take a seat at the table. She’d stopped off at the fridge first though, McCree could hear the door open and close. She set another beer down in front of him and he looked up at her with what might have been tears in his eyes.

“Bless you darlin’.”

She offered him a smile a bit like the one she’d offered Reinhardt. Composed and controlled but it was a bit less placid with one perfect eyebrow arched and her mouth curled to the side like that. Satya’s eyes darted to Fareeha. “What has our cowboy in a slump this time?”

“Just the usual-”

 All three of them paused so that the for the vocal crescendo of the song could hit, accompanied of course by Reinhardt’s supplied baritone harmony. McCree took the musically-imposed break in their conversation to pop the bottle cap of his newly supplied beer - Hey, metal hands had some unforeseen benefits.

It didn’t have the the characteristic “ahhh…” effervescence that beer used to. He missed that. Still any beer was better than no beer, and for most people no beer was their horrible day-to-day reality. Oddly enough, he missed cans too, if for nothing else than the nostalgia of his misspent youth drinking whatever garbage pisswater cans he could get ahold of when he was underage. Now that he couldn’t get them he found himself wanting for the easy satisfaction of cracking them open and crumpling them flat once they were empty. But even aluminum was being rationed now that the Pacific Wall project had gotten fully-underway.

Not that the wall had proven itself much hardier than an aluminum beer can. Those idiots had just been lucky that they hadn’t had to contend with anything more than broodling swarms and category 1s and 2s. He doubted it would fare so well against a category 3.

The thought of anything larger brought back worse-tasting memories than the pisswater beer he’d used to drink.

“I should have known.” Satya took a seat at the table with a fluid, graceful descent and picked up where they had left off now that the loudest parts of the Reinhardt/Hasselhoff duet had rounded out. “Just another day in the life and times of Jesse McCree?”

“Hey - it’s not everyday you try to drift with a new partner I feel like I’m entitled to more’n a little bit of unique sympathy missy.”

“Maybe not as much as the roof.” Offered Fareeha.

McCree drowned his groan in another long pull off of his beer, the action also gave him something to do with his hand. He was itching for a smoke, but dinner first. He’d already had two today and he didn’t want to end up depleting his dwindling stash before more arrived when the shipment of Winston’s other sundries came into Gibraltar. “I ain’t never gonna live today down am I?”

Satya came to his rescue once again, whether on purpose or as a side-effect. “If you want to live through dinner Fareeha I would get the jokes to that effect out of your system very quickly. I did see Vice Commander Morrison on my way here. I imagine he’ll be joining us shortly.”

The shrill cry of the kettle cut off any retort almost as efficiently as the musical number had earlier. Satya was saved the trouble of standing once again when the door to the mess swung open to reveal both Jack Morrison, as if summoned on cue and Mei-Ling Zhou. The latter smiled, cheeks round and flushed pink from the warmth of the mess, the sheer volume of food that was cooked on Reinhardt-days always brought the temperature up by several degrees and she’d probably been working in her cryolab if the bulky fleece she was still wearing was any indication.

Mei held up a hand to Satya in both friendly greeting and as reference for her to stay seated. She fetched the kettle off of the stove with a soft little “Pardon me Reinhardt, good evening!” and poured the steaming-hot water into the proper tea pot. Mei opened the cabinet just over her on the counter and went up onto her toes to peer in.

“Is darjeeling alright Satya? It looks like we’re out of the assam…”

“Quite.” Satya answered. “Thank you Mei.”

“Dinner is served!” Reinhardt announced and most everything else took a backseat to the plating and distribution of the mounds of meat and carbs that he had prepared. Zarya and Torbjorn filed in during the bustle from whatever work they had been doing, probably repairs, on the roof or otherwise, if they were together. 

It had been a long day and a pile of meat and potatoes suited McCree just fine. Even if he would have welcomed something that could have brought some spice to the flavor party… Reinhardt was a good enough cook that he rarely got any complaints (maybe because everyone needed a nap after they’d cleared their plates) but how the man thought sauerkraut and mustard were spicy McCree’d never know.

Before Reinhardt sat down to eat himself he portioned out the rest of the food into massive sized servings to set away for those not present, labeling each with a name and a poorly drawn smiley face. He paused before starting the last.

“Do you think we’ll be seeing the Miss Song tonight?” He asked the collected, partial assembly.

Zarya swallowed the massive chunk of potato she’d just put into her mouth. “I doubt it. The Commander told me I’d be meeting with her tomorrow morning for the her initial physical training assessment.”

“Makes sense.” McCree said. “Winston gave me orders to show up to you a bit after that an’ you too I reckon, Jack?”

Jack Morrison nodded from his end of the table, adjusting his glasses that sit on his nose and cast odd red-tinted shadows onto the tabletop in front of him.

“He told me also.” Fareeha added, pointing at McCree with her fork-speared sausage. “Although I can’t imagine why I’d really need to be there, I’m hardly the one who needs the new co-pilot.”

McCree shrugged, so did Zarya. “I’ll bet he just wants bases all covered, da?”

“And it will be a better assessment of her abilities if she can be tried against as many potential pilots as possible.” Mei offered, her words rapid with growing excitement. “You all got to meet her when she arrived, yes? I’m jealous. I only know her from what some of my old collaborators back east have said. Satya, did you go with them? You don’t have any repairs pending right now do you?”

She shook her head in a controlled, regal movement that sent the smooth cascade of her dark hair moving more than her face. “No, all of the watch points are functioning perfectly. But the portals are incredibly sophisticated technology all the same. They require regular monitoring. I had some other incoming information to sort through as well that I would have been remiss to ignore.”

“Same for me!” Mei whined but there was an energetic excitement that shown through the complaint. “I hadn’t realized she’d be coming so soon or I wouldn’t have started that experiment. New samples came in recovered from Auckland and I couldn’t leave it once I’d started on the specimen, if you don’t move it from the dry ice to the liquid nitrogen bath at exactly the right time the cells can be-”

She seemed to realize that she’d lost most of them. “Sorry, less shop talk at the table. I know.” Mei took a sip of her tea to provide a kind of apologetic pause before looping back. “What’s she like? Is she nice? One of my Beijing contacts warned me that apparently she can be a bit of a diva. "

“She has a bunny backpack.” Zarya supplied. “It is pink.”

“You seemed to get on with her well.” Added Torbjorn.

“Of course I did. I like her. Nasty people don’t usually have such cute little backpacks. She is kind of like a tiny bunny rabbit herself, but a feisty one.” Zarya made some kind clawing gesture that was distinctly un-rabbit-like in all ways, even if the rabbit under consideration was exceptionally feisty, but no one made any comment on it. 

It had been years since any of them had seen a rabbit, who were they to judge? Maybe they had all gotten into the kaiju blue and gone full-bunnicula and Zarya was completely accurate. It would hardly be the strangest thing that any of them had encountered.

Muted chuckles went around as they all occupied themselves properly with eating.

Fareeha broke the silence eventually with a bit of a sneer. “She is very young though - does Winston realize that he’s literally asking a teenager to mind link with middle aged-men?”

Satya pursed her lips in distaste although it wasn’t entirely clear whether the cause was the current subject of conversation or the fact that she was actually going to lower herself to the level of discussing it further. “This topic is neither appropriate nor appetizing.”

“Especially considering what happens with a lot of pilots…” Mei added, hiding behind her teacup.

“Hey now - what happened to the bunny line a questionin’?” McCree interjected, louder than was probably called for but dammit he wasn’t gonna sit there and let them just talk about him. Ain’t nobody who made a fool outta Jesse McCree.

Okay. That wasn’t entirely true, or even partially true in the broadest sense. But certainly “Ain’t nobody who made a fool outta Jesse McCree talking about him over fancy german sausage dinner like he wasn’t even there without Jesse McCree opening his mouth to probably and in all likelihood make the situation even worse” applied.

“I’m sure Winston knows what he’s doing, so don’t go runnin’ your mouths like that.” He pointed the neck of his nearly-empty beer bottle around at them nonspecifically and he felt as though he well and truly deserved another one after this.

“A’sides, I don’t mess about with young'uns. Gimmie a lady my age -”

“Or a guy.” Fareeha interjected snidely.

“Or a gentleman, yes Fareeha. Thank you.” McCree drawled out slowly and with over emphasized syllables in a smile that flashed his teeth at her. Because among everything else they all knew that McCree didn’t limit himself to ‘gentle’ anything.

“Who knows what they want and what they’re doin’ and how ta treat a man.” He brought his beer up for a victory swallow.

Fareeha leaned forward on her elbows towards McCree, looking perhaps more hawkish than she’d ever looked before.“Sorry… I forgot that you’d prefer to be the younger, blushing one in the relationship.”

To his credit McCree did not spit beer into her face, either out of shock, revulsion or retribution. It would have been a waste of perfectly okay-ish beer.

That came from the other end of the table.The shattering sounds of glass breaking, dulled a bit by the thick brown recyclable glass the beer bottles were made from, and the pat-pat of steady drips off the table from the floor. Then scratching, screeching groaning as Morrison shoved his half-finished plates forward and his seat back to stand and make his obviously unceremonious exit. Making sure, of course, to slam the door to the mess as a final emphasis.

McCree was sure this was going to end up being his fault. He swept a look back at Fareeha who at least had the good sense to look half as guilty as she should have.

Satya placed her tea cup back onto its saucer primly, with the polite tap of enameled ceramic. Her eyes were closed and her dark lashes swept over the curve of her cheekbones, savoring the residual taste of her darjeeling or perhaps whatever tatters remained of the earlier mood. “What did I say?”

Fareeha looked as if she wanted to roll her eyes, but didn’t like her chances in the argument that would ensue with Satya. She instead decided to inspect the worn rim of her cup of water.

“Damnit. Some’uns gonna have to clean that up.” McCree was looking back down the table at the dwindling puddle of spilt beer that had not yet dripped onto the floor to join the rest of its brethren contents.

Torbjorn coughed. Zarya eyed McCree.

“And why is this my fault?” McCree spluttered, gesturing animatedly in Fareeha direction. “Y’all know I never even did anything with Reyes, man was like a father to me.”

Zarya let out a bark of laughter and Fareeha pounced.

“Like a father Jesse? Did you call him ‘daddy’ and everything?” The same grin pulled at her face, the kind that would make small rodents scurry in fear of being lifted into the air and eaten. She leered at him across the table until she thought she’d won and took a drink from well-surveyed cup.

But this time Jesse had a smirk of his own to return and holy damn he wished he had a cigarillo to take a nice, fat pull off for dramatic emphasis. He settled for leaning forward once again.

“Fareeha, I drifted with the man. You know what all gets shared ‘cross that link. It woulda been ‘Papi’ - he liked the spanish better. And…” McCree’s eyes crawled sideways with a manufactured slink that ensured their direction was followed to the slammed mess door. “I was never the one who called ‘im that.”

In the end, Fareeha is the one who does the spit take that night.

Things eventually settled down, partially because Satya had a look that promised great and lengthy bodily harm to the next person (and their kin through five generations) who started anything for the length it took her to make another pot of tea to take back to her lab.

McCree and Fareeha, like the scolded children they were, both took charge of cleaning Morrison's smashed beer while Mei and Zarya tackled the dishes. Reinhardt stacked his arms full of the plates he’d made for those not in attendance and went off to distribute them.

Torbjorn very nearly stuck around to help before he caught Fareeha whispering, badly, to McCree as he mopped up the spill “Did he REALLY?”. After which he decided that, despite the hour, it was better for his sanity to get to work on drawing up the plans for the next stage of the roof repairs.

By the end of the mess hall clean-up they were back to the conversational stand-bys of long-time friends and the same bad jokes they’d told each other hundreds of times before. Most of them went to their beds that night eagerly awaiting whatever new flavor of insanity Hana Song’s compatibility testing would bring them the next morning.

They wouldn’t even have to wait that long.

 

  
The alarms went off at 4:03 AM.


	2. Dock I

The sound was blaring and unmistakable. The wailing of the pulsing siren resonated through the Watchpoint.

Just like it was designed to do: no one would be left asleep after Athena was done.

But there was no alarming jolt to consciousness when the alarm sounded, not for him at least.

McCree’s bare feet hit the ground before the rest of his mind even caught up with him, no need to kick free of the covers he hadn’t been using anyway. It only took him a span of seconds to pull on the the pair of socks he’d left within easy reach. The only time he wasted was when he threw open the door to the closet and began to pull out the pieces of his suit. His right-hand glove bounced on the bed as he tossed it behind him for later while he grabbed out the suit itself.

The entire process took him 12 seconds before his brain caught up with what he was doing.

He dropped the suit to the floor, he’d pick it up later, and shoved his feet in his boots that he’d left at the ready near his bed. His hat was still on his head. He didn’t sleep with his hat on but, he hadn’t been sleeping. It had been too much to hope for that a handful of beers would have been enough for to see him off to sleep. Not after all the things the drift attempt had dug out of the safe boxes he’d stashed them all away into.

McCree left his door open and took off down the hallway to the bridge.

“What’ve we got this time Athena?!” He yelled for his own benifit of being able to hear himself over the wailing alerts system. The AI had no such issues.

‘Category 3. First detected off the coast of British Columbia, it’s now well within the Salish Sea. It has passed the San Juan islands and is heading southeast. It seems abnormally adept at shallow water travel. ‘

“Southeast, we sure about that yet?”

'It has not yet made surface contact but signals are regular enough that Satya’s scans can be confirmed.’

“Fuck.” McCree swore loudly. This time it wasn’t in an effort to be heard. He rounded a corner fast enough that he had to catch his hand on the inner wall to pull himself around it to avoid his feet skidding out from underneath him. “It’s headed for Seattle  - Shit, Winston told those fucks it was still too close.”

Another corner and he almost collided with Jack. The two men avoided the near-inevitable fall by the concerted effort of both of them to continue moving quickly in the same direction. McCree ended up in the lead by the sheer luck of longer legs but neither man much cared.

Winston was already at the bridge controls when they arrived. The Commander's room was the closest for good reason. He was silent, no need for him to bark commands to an AI who was more efficient than any human mind to perform hard and set procedural prompting, but his eyes darted back and forth in the soft blue glow of the information streaming in front of him on the myriad displays.

Both Morrison and McCree stepped in closer to the Commander, each man moving to Winston’s opposite flanks. There was enough of the electronic blue light from Athena’s maps to illuminate all three faces as she filtered through the data. Each new window filled with scrolling statistics, maps and figures, nothing more concrete than Athena’s initial announcement. Not a one of them made to move. Athena’s alarms were the only sound, muffled as they echoed around the bridge.

When Morrison finally spoke it was only the proximity of the three men that made him heard. He hadn’t bothered to raise his voice.

“Too late to head it off at Fidalgo…It’s not wasting any time.” The lenses of his glasses reflected the monitor feed. The largest image was the map: the convoluted waterway of Puget Sound peppered with islands and channels between British Columbia’s southern peninsula and the northwest coast of Washington State. It was dotted with the trail of approach, as what information they had on the incoming kaiju’s warpath came into Athena’s database.

Too bad Jack’s glasses weren’t more rose-colored, the reflective red made it look like a warped hellscape.

Or maybe the red was perfect.

“Glad to see we all came to the same conclusion, Winston?” McCree was more than willing to yell over the background din, his eyes finally darted away from the screens.

The Commander nodded. “I told them it was too close to the shore line.”

McCree managed a hollow laugh. “You can’t never say that America ain’t stubborn. Betcha nobody gives a hot shit about that fuckin’ needle tower bein’ ‘too hard to move’ now.”

Satya’s voice through the base com. “Commander, the Americans are preparing to move the teleporter’s base for launch. Where is our strike point?” She always did have impeccable timing.

Winston’s eyes found the window Athena was using to track the kaiju’s southward course at the same time that the AI enlarged it for his view. “How soon can you have the portal operational once they have it set?”

“Assuming the Americans have kept to my maintenance and transport instructions, six minutes.”

“Iffin’ they didn’t?” McCree leaned forward. He always found his eyes searching for something to connect with when they ended up talking over disembodied technology like this. A habit he’d yet to grow out of.

“Then we’re left with Plan B: watch the Kaiju break through the wall and run rampant through downtown Seattle until I can troubleshoot around their errors.” Satya made a little ‘hmph’ that was posh and regal. Even without being able to see the turn of her head he knew always accompanied it. “Their loss. I never much liked Starbucks coffee anyway.”

“The middle of Whidbey Island.” Winston gave the order and they all heard Satya’s response. A different kind of ‘hm’ sound this time, before her line went silent. Beside him, Morrison nodded in agreement.

Then the light of the monitors was washed out before them as the brighter, undeniable blue of Justice Reign’s lighting filled the the bridge through the overlooking window into the hangar. Reinhardt, Torbjorn and Zarya all scuttled around the Jaeger like fairy tale mice getting their princess ready for the ball.

From the walkway above them the Ana and Fareeha watched, helmets in place, knowing they didn’t have long to wait.

What Underwatch no had longer in numbers, they’d made up for… somehow. Dedication. Heart. Insanity maybe. Any was a fair guess.

“Ground launch protocol complete.” Zarya called out as she stepped away from the Jaeger and raised a hand.

Reinhardt followed suit, clapping a massive his own massive palm to Torbjorn’s shoulder as the pair stepped away in unison. His voice came booming through the com, louder than the alarms now that they’d dropped to their background blare. “Justice Reign. Ready to fly like an Egyptian!”

“Clear.” Winston confirmed.

The torso cockpit opened slowly as Fareeha, recognizable as the taller of the two pilots and from her broader-shouldered suit outline, saluted Reinhardt below them. Ana turned back to the bridge and offered her salute to the Commander. It was a lax motion that wouldn’t have stood up to military scrutiny, but it hardly had to anymore.

Recently it had started to look much more the like a friendly wave goodbye.

Neither pilot wasted wasted further time. They turned in unison to move forward, carelessly stepping over the gap to take their places in the articulated pilot suspension. The taller on the right, the shorter on the left.

From the bridge, they couldn't hear the heavy footfalls of their steps on the mezzanine, but McCree’s memory was more than capable of filling in the blanks. The ingrained muscle memory  of the way the clunky boots forced you to  walk, not run, and the just always almost too-tight feel of the neck piece where it connected to the helmet fastenings.

He risked a glance sidelong at Jack to confirm.

No. Neither of them needed the sound.

“Pilots secure.” Fareeha relayed, her voice a truncated echo from the comlink in the helmet system. “Send us out Commander.”

They saw the lights inside the pilot’s helmets click on and for a moment they could see both Fareeha and Ana’s faces, washed in the same blue light as the rest of of Justice Reign’s hardware. Then the cockpit’s hatches folded back in on them and they were enclosed within their Jaeger.

“Athena.” Winston pushed himself closer still to the controls, despite the fact that there were no buttons to press or keys to turn. Just a command to be given. “Initiate Drift Sequence.”

‘Drift Sequence initiated. Opening drift link in 5.’

‘4.’

‘3.’

‘2.’

‘1.’

‘Prepare for Neural Handshake.’

Nothing happened that they could see, but nothing was supposed to happen. Not yet. The three men in the bridge, and the onlooking shadows in the hangar all watched nonetheless.

The alarms had faded to yet another degree; vague suggestions in the background now.

“Funny ain’t it, how this part’s always terrifyin’?” McCree didn’t whisper outright, but he said it on a forced exhale. “Even when you know there ain’t no problems with the pilots.”

Morrison loomed like a silent statute, arms crossed over his chest as he looked on.

“Terrifying.” The tendons in Winston’s large hands shifted over his bulging knuckles as he adjusted the clench of his fists. “Indeed.”

Then there was a screech and the heavy shifting groan of thousands of tons of metal jolting to life.

‘Pilot to pilot connection achieved. Pilots engaged in neural bridge.’

Justice Reign slouched with the sudden weight of its own form, mobile now and detached from the umbilical lines that had held it rigid in Dock 1. With a lurch, the massive Jaeger righted itself,  straightening it’s massive shoulders.

‘Drift successful. Neural bridge at 99.97% clarity.’

Zarya threw a hand up in the air. Her silhouette was cast clearly in Justice Reign’s azure glow, but her arm came from a strange angle and she looked too tall and distorted. She was probably carrying some bit of equipment.

McCree clapped. Three loud, slow raps of his fleshy palm against his metal one. Winston’s hands relaxed enough that he could right his glasses back to their proper place on his features.

Winston’s request went out through the com. “Justice Reign, confirm status.”

“Justice Reign: pilots synced and online Commander.” Fareeha’s voice responded in kind.

Another loosening groan as the metal monster’s shoulders rolled in turn on their jointed axes. It’s arms lifted and with a speed that seemed lethargic only because of its gargantuan size, it brought a massive fist into the spread palm that was waiting to meet it.

The sound from the gesture was as loud as it’s scale was grand and the hanger shook with the force of it.

They could all hear the hawkish grin in Fareeha’s voice. “Ready to kick some Kaiju ass.”

The only one who didn’t cheer was Torbjorn, who could only barely be heard above the rest of them, screaming to ‘PLEASE MIND HIS NEW REPAIRS, YA DAMN HEATHENS!’

As usual it was Ana’s voice that brought them all eventually to heel. “Are teleporter launch protocols online and ready, Miss Vaswani?”

“Of course, Vice Commander Amari.”  Satya’s voice was calm and concise. “The Americans seemed to have listened to my instructions as to the teleporter’s operations. Their transport has touched down the base on Whidbey.”

Fareeha spoke, giving the confirmation. “Justice Reign, ready when you are Vaswani.”

Winston nodded. “Satya. Initialize teleporter link for Jaeger deployment.”

There was no audible response from Satya’s side of the com. Instead the hanger began to brighten. At first the additional light was almost indistinguishable from the radiant blue of Justice Reign’s systems already set ablaze by its activation. But it bloomed up further and ever more insistent from the dock behind the Jaeger: a bright wash of softer turquoise. It was an effect by steady and ordered degrees until only the brightest of Justice Reign’s cerulean glows were distinguishable from the ethereal mantle that had come to surround it.

The hanger was illuminated now better than it had been with the sunlight filtering down through the wrecked ceiling that day. In the black hours of the morning the light from the dock’s base was brighter and harder than any natural light could ever be.

“Teleporter link is live Commander.” Satya relayed.

Their expressions were all awash with the pale blue of the teleporter’s light, those on the bridge and the onlooking walkway alike.

Winston gave the order: “Launch.”

Inside Justice Reign’s cockpit, suspended into the armatures of their controls, Fareeha and Ana each took a single step back in perfect sync. The third party in their link followed suit, a fraction of a neural second behind. The Jaeger took a seven-ton step back into the shimmering ellipse of the teleporter, and vanished from the hanger.

With the Jaeger deployed, the alarms fell truly silent.

Satya’s smooth voice seemed to blend perfectly up from the resulting calm. “Transfer successful Commander.”

“Justice Reign has arrived!” Fareeha’s declaration over their connection was decidedly less so, but as quickly and clearly relayed from it’s source as it had been in the hanger. Even though the pilot was now more than 5000 miles away from them. “Lovely evening here in Puget Sound.”

McCree whooped and his boots’ spurs chimed with his excitement. He’d managed to catch himself and turn the foot-stomping he’d originally started into a meager few taps of his heel. A great show of restraint all things considered. He leaned forward over Winston’s shoulder. “Athena already tell you the specs on today’s particular brand’a nasty?”

“Indeed. Category 3 headed for Seattle?” Ana asked levely.

“That’d be my thinkin’.” McCree nodded even though he knew they couldn’t see him - It was a hard habit to break dammit.

They could all hear Fareeha’s sardonic laughter over the com link. “Didn’t Winston tell the dumb Americans that they should have built their wall way further inland? What’s wrong with your country Jesse?”

“Don’t ask me Fareeha.” McCree’s drawl evened out to lower tones. “Ain’t much water at all for miles back where I’m from. Much less an ocean.

“Sides… ain’t been my country for a long while.” His eyes shifted down and he took a shuffled step back if the sound of his spurs was any indication. The laugh he used to cover up the motion was rougher than he’d intended. “I got no idea what brand’a crazy kept ‘em from listening.”

“Too much Starbucks?” Fareeha offered, humor still lacing her words even if it had leached out of McCree’s. “Or maybe they ran their surveying codes through Microsoft Windows?”

“Are you two finished? This isn’t something to be taken lightly.” Morrison interjected with steely derision.

“Sorry Dad. Where are my manners? It’s so easy to forget there’s real danger when we’re the ones out here risking our lives. What was I thinking-”

“Fareeha!” Ana’s voice cut off whatever else Fareeha was going to say into the com link, and if Ana had any more commentary it was disrupted still further by the insistent beeping coming up from Winston’s monitors.

‘Drift synchronization destabilizing. Neural bridge connection at risk.’ Athena updated.

A new window maximized automatically into view in front of Winston. The flow of information was too fast to be useful to anything but Athena’s overclocked processing power, but the flashing red warning signs were obvious to them all.

Winston yelled his orders to his monitors. “Pilots! Stabilize!”

There was a noise that sounded like Fareeha’s voice in the background of the link before it went dead.

It was once again silent on the bridge except for, Winston swore, the sound of his own damn pulse as it raced through him. The entire situation made all the worse by the lack of visual feed. Satya’s sentries not yet fully online. Morrison stood straight-backed and immobile behind him as always. McCree’s nervous energy restricted to the restless fidgeting of his fingers, mechanical and flesh alike.

‘Destabilization halted at 76.8%’

Winston took the time to exhale. “Justice Reign. Status report.”

“We are alright Commander.” Ana affirmed.

“Good, can you get back into sync?” Winston asked.

“I believe so.” Ana replied. “Perhaps not into the nineties.”

“We still have control.” Fareeha added.

“Minor hiccup.” Said Ana.

Winston’s eyes finally looked away from the window monitoring their drift back to the map of the northwestern waterways. No additional information had been updated. “You have the time. Get yourselves into better drift, if you can.”

“Roger.” Ana and Fareeha were in concert when they responded to the command. A positive sign.

‘Pilot synchronization recovering. Neural bridge clarity rising.’ Even Athena’s even-toned updates had a renewed ease. ‘Stable at 87.8%’

McCree didn’t quite whoop this time but his he brought his hands together in a tight clasp of relief. Winston let out another breath that had been building during the wait. If Morrison had any reaction, he didn’t make it known.

“We’ve got it Commander.” Fareeha’s words were final welcome confirmation.

As if in final declaration of their success, the window blinking the renewed drift strength shifted to to the side with the other background information, replaced by a clear visual feed front and center of their field.

Justice Reign stood strong and powerfully present in the shallows off of Whidbey island. The water was relatively calm, for now. The waves on the horizon were almost black now that the sun had all but set below the horizon on this half of the world. The lapping waves around the shore shone bright and cast about the melange of blue lights from the Jaeger and the teleporter both.

“You have the visuals, Commander?” Satya’s voice inquired calmly from her side of the link, as though no hiccups had occurred at all.

‘Full and clear Miss Vaswani’ Athena confirmed. ‘Feed is coming through uninterrupted.’

“I will continue to monitor kaiju movement. We have not picked up any movement on our sensors for several clicks. We have perhaps gotten lucky this time.” Satya’s spoke her updates even as her fingers could be heard busy at her console controls.

“Roger that Vaswani.” Fareeha said. “We’ll stand by.”

They were fighting blind if they didn’t have any incoming data. It wasn’t an easy task, waiting, but it was a necessary one.

McCree’s spurs chimed once more on the floor in an irregular rhythm.

It earned him a glare from behind Morrison’s red lenses.

He shrugged, making no move to stop the soft tapping that caused the little metal bits to click against the floor of the bridge. His idle chatter with Fareeha had nearly gotten her and Ana desynced, Morrison could deal with a little of his fucking fidgeting.

The only other sound was the pick up from the waves over Fareeha and Ana’s side of the com link.

The door to the left side of the bridge opened with the usual mechanical slide. It was the only decorous thing about the entrance.

“That was epic!”

To the three men there, hanging on the most minute of changes reported in from the monitors, her voice could have been as loud as a gunshot. Or an atom bomb.

Hana Song’s voice still rang in all of their ears as she bounded forward, eyes alight to rival Satya’s still-shimmering teleporter. She was barefoot, wearing a worn t-shirt the words “YOU MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS” and flannel shorts with a little repeating pattern of the usual bunny design. Her hair laid flatter on one side of her head than the other.

None of this seemed to matter to her.

“I knew it was some old Vishkar tech that moved the Jaeger’s around so quickly but I’d never gotten to actually SEE it! I only hope the light didn’t wash out the vid feed I recorded.”

The three men on the bridge just stared. Even McCree was stunned into a few moments of still silence. He recovered eventually.

“Nice shorts.”

“Jesse, please. It is not safe to be out in the hangar with an active Jaeger dressed like that Miss Song.” Winston scolded, directed at both of them most likely.  “We have procedures!”

Zarya came through the door into the bridge behind her. “It is alright Commander! I met her when I climbed up onto the platform to watch them ship out. I put her on my shoulders.”

She said it as though that fact solved all of the problems presented.

“No bare feet on the ground in the Hanger, da?”

Hana smiled and offered Zarya a fist for a bump, which Zarya met with a single-fingered tap. She didn’t want to push her over. Or into a wall.

Winston blinked.

Insanity surely. Insanity was surely the only reason that any of them were still functioning.

Hana’s bare feet slapped against the floor as she crowded in to see the visual feed of Justice Reign. A sound almost as loud as her voice.

“Is that them?” She groaned comically, but when she started speaking again her mood wasn’t at all dampened. “Your feeds are so much better than what we got at the wall. This has gotta be full 4k from the old 1080p, huh?”

She only stopped at Fareeha’s laughter filtering through the link. “Who let the new girl onto the bridge?”

Winston looked like he was going to say something until Ana’s laughter joined her daughter’s. “What kind of operation are we running, Commander?”

That put a smile on even his face. McCree was already laughing. And Morrison’s scowl hadn’t gotten any worse. He was evidently following the Commander’s propriety, though he hadn’t yet progressed from ‘if you can’t beat ‘em’ to  ‘join ‘em.’

The vague sense of merriment rolled over them and while Winston was willing to admit they were all better for it this time, the world outside the Jaeger’s cockpit had been suspiciously quiet.

“Do we have any updates Sayta?”

“Not a one Commander.” She was all business on her side. “My sentries have lost signal entirely. I need better information.”

“We’ll see what we can do about that. Justice Reign, can you enter the water? The additional sensory data from your equipment may help.”

“Roger Commander.” Fareeha responded. “Risk seems minimal. We are wading out now.”

Fareeha held the link open a bit too long. For a moment there was a resonant feedback loop as the noise from Justice Reign’s heavy, sure-footed steps into the shallow surf came through both the external feed and Fareeha’s com link. It had everyone, Fareeha included, reeling back.

But the Jaeger did not falter as it took slow, sure-footed steps into the high evening tide. Massive as Justice Reign was, it looked just as at home in water as it did on land, despite the avian-design of its exterior. Neither pilot kept her hand and arm awkwardly raised out of the water, instead casting them each about in slow arcs to agitate the too-calm surface of the water.

“Getting anything Vaswani?” Fareeha asked, better managing her link now, or perhaps it was just the water muffling the groan of Justice Reign’s metal musculature. “We’re nearly waist deep.”

“Not yet. But the information feed is good.” Satya updated. “I’ve sent for Mei, Commander - she may have some additional insight into the kaiju’s patterns from her observations of the initial data. I’ve never seen one drop out of my sights like this.”

Zarya frowned, coming up behind Hana and the rest of them around the monitors. “Is the water too choppy? Too much interference?”

“No…” McCree’s metal fingers were tapping again at thigh where his arm hung too-still. “Exact opposite.”

“Indeed. This is almost uncharacteristic for the area.” Satya sounded similarly out of sorts. “The weather is cooperating well enough that I can pick up the motion of the fish and wildlife in the area.”

“What the hell are they still doing there? They always scatter when the kaiju broodlings show up - is it different for the big ones?” Hana asked.

“No.” Morrison’s voice as sure as it was abrupt.

Fareeha cleared her throat. “Commander, do we go further?”

Winston paused to think.

“Wait!”

Mei’s voice joined the bridge conversation over Satya’s com link, sounding as frantic as she did out of breath. Visual confirmation of came shortly after, another window flashing up in front of Winston’s ever-expanding horizon of incoming information. Her cheeks were as rosy as they often were when she left the cold rooms of her lab, but rather than the usual fleecy bulk she wore at work she’d wrapped herself in a blanket with little penguins on it and her hair was mostly escaping the usual bun she wore.

“There’s something weird about this one!” Her words were interrupted by the clatter of her glasses onto the desk she’d ran to as she skidded further into frame. She talked through the process of putting them back onto her face. “Athena was right about it’s shallow-water travel patterns. I was reviewing the scan’s that she managed to get from Satya’s sensors before they went blank. I mean, I can’t be entirely sure because It’s always hard to accurately extrapolate kaiju biology and environmental adaptations from external data but-”

“Mei, please.” Satya’s was curt, and her face was stern. Her image joined her voice over the link now that she moved to stand beside Mei, a bit out of the frame due to her height. She was just as put together as Mei, though her voice hadn’t shown it.

“Sorry.” Mei likewise nodded her affirmation through her speech. “There’s something different about this one, I’ve never quite seen anything like it before from the other samples that I’ve been sent. It’s like it’s-”

She was cut off this time, not by one of her fellow agents, but a piercing shriek of a sound that should not have been as clear as it was through the Jaeger side of the com link.

It made every single one of the Underwatch agents pause: those on the bridge, in the lab, and on the beach 40 miles from the population center of Seattle.

In the med bay, the doctor wasn’t fast enough to kill her audio feed before it woke her charge from what had nearly been a rare chance at an uninterrupted sleep cycle.

The hanging, apprehensive tension wasn’t so much as cut as it was ripped by the frayed fibers that had strung them all together. Justice Reign’s mechanics groaned as the Jaeger wrenched a rapid turn, the blue glow of the Jaeger’s optics alighted in a visual concert with the whining charge of the mobility and weapons system alike. The water splashed, angry and wild, with the suddenness of the response.

“Justice Reign, Report!” Winston bellowed over the cacophony that had been birthed by the kaiju screech, eyes darting wildly from screen to screen.

The visual feed was in as much chaos as the audio. Satya’s sentries unable to find their kaiju target’s location among the chaos of motion, color and light that the shallows had become.

He waited only a beat before he sent another order over the com. “Justice Reign. Where is the target, the water is too-”

“It’s on land Commander! It’s already behind us.” Fareeha’s response came equally loud back to the bridge.

“What-” Winston corrected himself with a darting quickness. “Satya! Get us a feed on land.”

The only monitor of any use to them was the Jaeger view, and it was so shaky it barely counted. Fareeha and Ana had set into a ragged run once they’d cleared enough water. Whether they realized they were on their own or not, they were operating under their own initiative.

“Concussive blast is online and ready, do we have-”

Fareeha had barely started the question when Ana caught in flawlessly on the next word. “Jets? Yes. Engaging now.”

The Jaeger’s view feed dissolved further into an indistinguishable blur of motion. Rapid forward progress being the only sure theme.

Satya was able to bring the external sentries on, functioning and re-centered on the writhing mass of lizard-like flesh that was their Kaiju quarry further down the isthmus.

For all of Mei’s alarm there was nothing about it visually that instantly set it apart from the creatures of its ilk they’d faced before. It differed in the usual ways of course. Each one was a new take on a jumbled assemblage of parts: both animal and alien and everything between. This one was a quadruped but its body was held aloft off of the ground in a way that was distinctly more mammalian than the rest of it’s reptilian features. It had neither the stocky strength of an ungulate torso, nor the sleek lines of a predator’s. If anything it was pudgy, it’s low-hanging stomach almost distended in the belly. It all made the long extension of its neck and thin lashing tail seem like a last minute tack-on.

It made an easy mark, at least, now that it had surfaced. Both by virtue of it’s size as well as the phosphorescent glow that they all seemed to have.

‘Target confirmed’ Heralded Athena.

“Seems like the usual brand’a ugly we’ve always seen.” McCree, keeping to form, offered up the commentary that had gone through all of their minds.

“At least this one doesn’t have tentacles.” Zarya started, then corrected herself. “That we can see.”

As if it could hear them, the hellspawn whipped its sinewy neck back. It screeched another roar into the night air. Then it smashed the nearest structure under a three-toed (six-clawed) foot, a three-story victorian that had probably been a very quaint and over-priced bed and breakfast.

Then it was smashed itself as the the falcon came down with all of the wrath of the angry sky god it was.

“Justice Reign from above!” Fareeha’s exuberant battle cry went back through the com, peppered with the steady staccato of the rockets firing into the side of the monster at the sudden close range.

Blue kaiju blood steamed as it flew hotly up into the Jaeger’s blue lighting.

McCree laughed softly. “Atta girl, way to save on ammo.”

No one scolded him for his lightness, not even Morrison.

Hana took it as acquiescence. “Hell yeah! Get dunked scrub!”

The beast was screaming and writhing under the Jaeger’s weight, clawing loud grinding rents at whichever parts of its attacker it could reach. Winston’s monitors flashed status updates. The Kaiju opened its mouth in another roar, three rows of teeth shining wetly with spittle that flecked and flew everywhere with each motion of the two giants. It surged it’s flexible neck forward, seeking after a bite for grip and purchase.

It was lightning fast, but Ana was faster. She threw up Justice Reign’s left side arm in a defensive block that caught the Kaiju’s jaw and forced it away from their center. Fareeha had stopped shooting now to lend, literally, the other hand. It’s teeth clicked in ratcheting notches as it pressed forward all the same. They grappled and grunted each in their turn. It was strong in a way that any angry, spitting monster over 100 feet tall could be and it wasn’t long before Ana had to readjust her slipping defense. She pushed the elbow forward and forced the entire forearm across the back of the beast’s gullet.

Choking it or breaking its jaw seemed as effective a way to kill it as any. And if McCree thought they had been saving bullets before… Fareeha dug her hand’s grip into the monster’s neck.

Perfect teamwork.

It would have worked too, if the Kaiju didn’t suddenly unhinge its jaw like the foulest anaconda cousin from hell.

Justice Reign fell forwards, unbalanced with the sudden lack of resistance and the monster made a further surge upwards.

Winston’s monitors blared their warnings at the same time that their Jaeger’s arm sank down into the Kaiju’s widening hell-maw.

“ANA-”

“Fine, Commander!” And she almost sounded it even over the alarms that were likewise going off in the Jaeger cockpit. Ever the soldier, even partially stuck down a Kaiju’s digestive track. “Fareeha, Concussive-”

Their entire feed jolted as the Kaiju’s whip like tail crashed into them. It had their heads and their hardware alike spinning. It got in a second crashing blow before Fareeha’s flailing arm caught it on the third.

With a scream of her own the Jaeger’s finger tips caught and dug into flesh, sick blue blood pooling out in sizzling bursts as it contacted oxygen.

Support gone from it’s head, the left side of the Jaeger sank further down into the Kaiju’s open mouth.

‘Jaeger hull integrity threatened.’ Came Athena’s update, windows flashing bright red warnings over the left arm and shoulder portion of Justice Reign. ‘Hull integrity at 64% and falling.’

Whirling the Jaeger’s wrist about, Fareeha circled the sinuous whip-tail around the Jaeger’s right hand and forearm, grabbing in tighter to meatier parts of the appendage. The torsion twisted the bone structure beneath it the slickness of its skin, spiked spurs nearly breaking through skin at each strained apex.

Fareeha and the monster snarled in concert.

Mouth unoccupied by her mother’s meddling unlike her opponent, and surely she’d be commenting on that later, Fareeha won their shouting match.

And their tug of war.

Vertebra popped out of articulation and flesh finally stretched enough to tear. The accompaniment of wet, slick sounds would have been sickening if they didn’t herald the Jaeger’s progress.

When the portion she’d held finally came free in her hand she wasted no time to whip it away into the air, Underwatch would surely catch flack for the ‘needless spread of harmful Kaiju blue into the ecosystem’ but the UN wasn’t there now and she needed that hand right now.

Ana turned to look at her daughter hanging beside her in pilot suspension. “Fareeha, are conc-”

“Concussive blast ready.” It wasn’t an interruption so much as it was a continuation of a thought.

“Deploying now.”

A rocket shot out from it’s housing in Justice Reign’s wrist and exploded into its target point-blank.

The Kaiju flew back, further painting the battleground with the glowing blue of its noxious insides. Justice Reign was propelled just as violently backwards, but the distance was what both pilots had been waiting for.

Their mass skidded and splashed to a combined halt halfway into the surf where they righted themselves and stood. Left arm still shedding loosed kaiju teeth and dripping ichor into the shallows.

Screw saving bullets.

“Fire barrage!” Justice Reign commanded with two voices.

The night sky lit to the fiery color of daylight as the rapid projectiles dislodged and took flight through the air, the first homing in and seeking out their target even as more followed. The continued contact reports sounded as each one blazed further into bright life as it connected with what was quickly becoming a lifeless hodgepodge of limbs and features.

Eventually, even the motion from the missile charges stopped and the mass of seeping blue flesh was truly still.

Ana shook Justice Reign’s left arm, flecking the beach with still more bits of kaiju miscellany. “Well, that’s done then.”

Fareeha laughed. “Only a little bit more than we bargained for. Nothing that Justice Reign can’t handle.”

The assembly on the bridge broke out into, perhaps predictable, cheering.

Winston rolled his eyes, but there was a smile on his face all the same. He was slouched back in his chair now, as if he was a puppet whose strings had been let go now that their victory had been clinched. He didn’t bother to hide the exhaustion in his voice, or the relief when the din died down enough for him to speak. “Congratulations on victory Justice Reign, get back to the teleporter and return to base.”

“You don’t want us to assist with sample collection?” Ana asked and Fareeha added in the same breath: “Jaeger damage isn’t so severe that we can’t-”

“No, Ana.” Winston summoned enough energy to command. “You get back to base.”

“Don’t you mean both of us, Commander? We’re kinda stuck together…” Fareeha clarified, confused.

“Yes, obviously.” Winston corrected abruptly. “Athena should start diagnostics on Justice Reign’s damage as soon as possible.”

“Okay… We’ll head back in.” The amusement had dried up to skepticism in her voice when the punchline she’d been expecting didn’t come. “Are you sure you don’t need us? If Mei thinks there’s really something weird about this one, the crows will be on it in seconds. We don’t want to be buying our own samples off of the black market.”

Winston cleared his throat. “That was an order Fareeha. Torbjorn and Mei will get their suits and go out for parts. Mei will know exactly what samples she needs and Torbjorn is the best-equipped scrapper around. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this dance.”

“Loud and clear, Commander.” Fareeha’s acquiescence came over the com, even it was petulant around the edges.

“We are returning to the portal now.” Ana clarified.

“Thank you.” Winston offered with a distinct air of finality. “Satya, is the teleporter link stable enough to keep up through sampling process and transport?”

Satya’s voice betrayed no hint of the earliness of the hour. “Of course, Commander.”

Zarya shouldered into Winston’s space tentatively. “I’ll suit up as well. I’ll and bring the particle cannon with me. If those vultures show up, they won’t know what it them. I haven’t had any target practice in a while.”

She said it with a laugh and a smile and it was an olive branch if ever there was one.

Winston nodded his thanks to her. “We’ll have Reinhardt go along as well, have him bring that great big hammer he loves to tote around.”

“Probably wouldn’t be able to keep ‘im away.” McCree agreed around a yawn. Now that the adrenaline had gone out of the room and left the usual bundle of jittery, raw nerves in it’s wake, he could feel the crash coming on.

Good. He’d be able to get to his room and changed before it finally set in, maybe even have a cigar.

He might even be able to sleep.

Winston seemed to have read the room as well. “The rest of you head back to your bunks and get some sleep. Since Zarya has volunteered for further work this morning, we will push back Miss Song’s compatibility testing a few hours, to accommodate rest for everyone. But that is still Watchpoint priority project number one.”

Morrison finally deigned to speak his piece. “Will you be in attendance Commander?”

“Remains to be seen. I trust you and Zarya to oversee the proceedings.” Winston replied.

Zarya laid a hand on the Commander’s shoulder. “I hope you might be getting some sleep.”

Winston finally let his eyes trail down to the message from Dr. Zeigler in the corner of his window - flashing yellow. Not as urgent as the red warnings of the Kaiju attack and the Jaeger damage, but not one to be ignored. A fist tightened around his heart.

“I have a few things that need to be seen to.”

Being close enough to follow the shift in his attention, Zarya’s offered what comfort she could with a subtle squeeze. Then she let him be and turned to the rest.

“You heard the man. To bed! All of you!” She bellowed with an almost too-wide grin on her face. “Don’t think I won’t have energy to whip you into shape after I’m done ripping bits off of a singed Kaiju corpse.”

McCree mirrored her smile, in essence if not in strength. He stretched his arms up in a sleepy gesture that only looked exaggerated. Then he tipped his hat to Zarya, and to the group at large.

“Certainly don’t need t’be told twice.”

For once, none of them did.

Fareeha followed the order without question. She waited until they had disembarked from the Jaeger and changed out of their suits before she went hunting after her mother.

Ana coughed out a ‘Coming!’ when her daughter knocked heavily on her door in the barracks hallway. Whether she knew or not who was at her door, she took the time to collect herself before opening it. She balled up the scrap of fabric she’d been using to cover her mouth and threw it into her trash bin, then kicked at the side of it to sift the red-stain further down into the small pile of it’s contents. After a brief consideration, she shoved the whole little bin out of view underneath her desk.

She didn’t seem surprised when she opened her door to find Fareeha there.

It took Fareeha a moment to lower her hand, still curled into a loose fist raised at the ready if any additional knocking was necessary.

“Do you - can we talk?” She asked.

Ana nodded and stepped aside in invitation.

Inside, Fareeha glanced around at her mother’s spartan, organized space. The similarities to her own, of course, were uncanny. She glanced down at the still-made, tightly-tucked bed before she decided her restlessness was better served trying to stand still than sit still.

Ana watched her, waiting.

Fareeha sighed. “We did alright tonight, yes?”

Her mother smiled slightly. “Well, the world will have Starbucks coffee for at least one more day… Should we consider that a win?”

They both had a similar, small bout of laughter.

The smile didn’t stay long on Fareeha’s face. “We almost de-synched.” She said softly.

“De-syncs happen to pilots, dear.”

“But it’s been happening more and more often to us.” Fareeha’s voice piqued into a louder register. “We barely caught it this time.”

“Well, you were trying rather hard to antagonize Jack, Fareeha.” Ana’s voice was still quiet, but it too had lost its softness.

“It was a joke. He should have known better than to take it seriously.” She paused, but wasted no time in rolling into further commentary when a response did come quick enough for her liking.

“And you’re just going to take his side on that, aren’t you?” Fareeha changed the topic, but not her voice. “Why are you always defending him?” 

“He is the Vice-Commander of this organization. He deserves more respect than you gave him this morning.” Ana leveled one eye worth of contact with her daughter.

Fareeha looked away. She only just managed to avoid crossing her arms over her chest and becoming even more the petulant child she was suddenly aware she already felt like. This conversation was a mistake.

“If you think so highly of him, why can’t you drift with him?”

“I can, dear.”

Her eyes whipped back to her Mother immediately. “What? Since when?”

Ana didn’t quite roll her eye. “Since the old days of Underwatch. Always. We were all tested. He and Gab-” She corrected herself. “Commander Reyes simply made the better pilot team.”

Fareeha laughed again, but it had a grit to it like sandpaper. “Only because they were fucking each other whenever they weren’t in the Jaeger.”

Ana’s eye narrowed up at her daughter, but the strength of the glare lost nothing between the height difference. “Fareeha, this is what I was talking about.”

“And this is what I was talking about!” She volleyed back. “You have an entire history, years, that I’ve never heard about. I had no idea about you and Morrison! How much else are you keeping from back then that I don’t know?”

“Now, Fareeha, how do you figure that?” Ana finally looked tired. Old. “For better or for worse, you’ve seen everything I know. You know that I can’t hide anything in the drift.”

Fareeha looked down again. “Reyes did, from Jack.”

“Commander Reyes was an exception to more rules than just that one. No one else could possibly-”

“If anyone else could, it would be you.”

“I..” Ana sighed. “I don’t know what you want me to say. This seems like a conversation better had after some sleep. It’s already been a long day.”

Fareeha turned her head but nodded. “You’re right, I just… Nevermind. Later I guess.”

She only just managed not to slam her mother’s door on her way out.

 

* * *

 

The Commander wasn’t present the next morning. 

Though it was, in all accuracy, closer to afternoon when they finally managed to assemble everyone in the training room. Which was for the best: McCree barely managed to stifle the huge, hound-dog yawn that inadvertently accompanied the first loosening stretch of his tense shoulders.

He hadn’t slept of course.

The Underwatch training room was a massive space, open and unencumbered but for the stock of equipment stationed around the edges, spartan and purposeful. Entering from the barracks hallway on the one side it was a sprawling, high-ceilinged space that was almost daunting in its expanse. Coming from the hanger, and the metal monstrosities sleeping there in their docks, it was stifling.

Zarya stood at the head of the room, barefoot and casually clothed in comfortable workout gear. She met them with a look and attitude somewhere equidistant between an excitable schoolteacher on the first day and a bear waiting at the base of the waterfall where it knew the exhausted salmon would flounder helplessly waiting for it.

She had the same grin on her face she’d had when she’d made her promise to them earlier that morning.

McCree took one glance at her and shifted his commentary on her disposition a decided few notches closer to ‘hungry grizzly bear’. Even if he was looking like the only fish who wouldn’t be able to jump up the waterfall. The rest of them were looking bright-eyed and bushy tailed, despite the night’s events.

Bright-eyed and bushy finned? Should he be trying better to keep with the fish analogy?

Fuck it. He was too tired for this.

And when he realized that he was trying to describe Jack Morrison, Vice Commander of Underwatch and Certified USDA, Grade-A Hardass as anything using the words ‘bright-eyed’ and ‘bushy’, the entire metaphor fell apart entirely.

Served him right for trying to be all poetic after a night like that.

Hana Song certainly fit the bill. She looked only marginally more put-together than when she’d burst onto the bridge, but the boundless energy still sloughed off her in careless excess. She had a smile that matched Zarya’s in ferocity if not in aspect. The kilowatt grin was in full effect this morning. Zarya was right: she was like an angry bunny.

The image had a bit more sticking power with him now, in his hazy sleepless state. With a second thought, McCree realized that he’d seen jackrabbits fight back home in the scrub brush, and he really didn’t much need to guess at the concept of a ‘killer bunny’.

Fareeha made a decent showing of herself as well. She stood straight and confident, betraying no hint that she was anything less than 110%. The bags under her eyes and the bruises up her forearms from her suit, visible on her bare arms, told a different story. But her crooked come-at-me grin dared anyone to suggest she wasn’t fit for her job.

Her mother’s daughter through and through.

Morrison was... ever himself. Staring down the world from behind his red lenses. Just in sweatpants instead of the usual blue fatigues.

Zarya didn’t give them much time to mill about, definitely for the best, she’d probably seen the way that Hana’s eyes had lit up (impossibly brighter) once Fareeha had entered the room. It was one thing to meet a Jaeger pilot amidst the chaos of an arrival to a new, strange place. It was an entirely different thing to come face to face with someone who you’d seen first hand wrestling with a poison-spewing hellspawn the size of a cruise ship and save the world.

It wasn’t an unfair or unexpected reaction, just a potentially inconvenient one. Zarya could only hope that the new perspective didn’t hinder their efforts. There was a chance that the new-found hero complex could strengthen a tentative compatibility, but she’d been at this long enough to know to trust the sinking clench of her gut when she felt it.

But let it never be said that Aleksandra Zaryanova backed down from a challenge because of a bit of nervous indigestion. Or for any other reason.

“So.” She started, hands on her hips with her eyes meeting each of her four charges in purposeful turn. “Good to see you all got some sleep.”

Zarya paused, she stopped at McCree on the left-side end of the impromptu line they had made. His eyes had fallen shut. She kicked the volume up a few decibels with careless ease. Not yelling, just getting seamlessly louder. A talent only she and Reinhardt seemed uniquely to possess.

“Or at least some rest, maybe?”

It worked of course.

His eyelids jolted open, an action that was echoed in the rest of his lanky hang of limbs.

“Uh… Yeah! Yeah a’course we did.” His eyes flicked down to the side and he raised his flesh-and-blood hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. The brim of his hat partially hiding his face from the new angle. It was habit she recognized for the begrudging embarrassment that it always was. But he met her eyes after he’d had his moment. “Sorry Zarya, I’ll be fine.”

The cold clench in her chest at the sound of his voice was entirely different from the one her stomach had made early. But she didn’t have time for the empathic pull to comfort her friend. They didn’t need comfort now. They needed a new team of pilots.

She could go back to being McCree’s friend after she was done being his trainer for the day.

Zarya gave herself the space of time it took to stalk to the edges of the sprawling room and grab a practice bo staff from the rack of its fellows for demonstration.

When she returned to the center of the floor her smile was back in place. She set the staff against the crook of her neck and shoulder. She cut straight to the point - McCree might well fall nod off on his feet again if she didn’t make things interesting.

“Hana. You never seen our compatibility testing? Never heard anything of it?”

The small girl’s mouth hadn’t lost its smile but she did look slightly put out now that she’d been given the opening to ask. “I guess nothing I read was very factual, why are we here? Where are the Jaegers?”

Zarya let herself laugh. Tapped the solid length of the staff at against the bulk of her trapezius muscle. “You can’t go throwing every two people you mash together into a multi-billion dollar piece of engineering, especially not one that’s armed with everything short of thermonuclear weaponry.”

Fareeha huffed a chuckle. “You saw the hole in the hangar roof, right? That was what happened when a drift went south between these two.” She gestured to the men standing next to her. “And they had passed every preliminary test.”

She continued despite the realization she could see rolling over Hana.

“Imagine what would happen between two people who are completely incompatible.”

Hana got the point. “Has that ever happened?”

“No.” Zarya dragged them back on task. In a lightning swift flick of her wrist, no muscle motion wasted or over stated, she whipped the staff across the room at her four charges. The blunt, tapered end of the smooth-worn wood not wavering so much as a visible millimeter as she held it out. “And this is why.”

She started with Fareeha and McCree, as an an example.

They were not compatible. The two of them never had been and they didn’t choose to change then.

Not that the drift had ever been about choice. Will, certainly: the drift couldn’t happen unless both parties were actively trying to make the connection. Drive and desire helped. But there had to be something there to start.

A link.

A spark.

A catalyst.

Something to start the reaction in the crucible of the Jaeger.

Zarya didn’t know what it was. She only knew what it wasn’t.

It wasn’t there with Fareeha and Jesse even if both of them wanted it to be.

They were both of them strong and able fighters, neither fumbled the staff in their hands when Zarya threw one to each of them. Even McCree, for all that he was only half awake. They even meshed near perfectly in the circles they made around one another before, inevitably, it was Fareeha who darted forward to strike first.

And McCree could match her strikes. He didn’t dodge or step back in retreat. Never a flinch given where her attacks were concerned.

That was good. Each of those factors had been a point in their favor when first they’d been tested.

But Fareeha only ever brought her full-force to bear on McCree’s right side: where she knew he could meet her with the careless, practiced ease of real-human muscle memory.

And McCree, of course, was even worse. For every snarled insult and cocky, verbal jab he threw her way while they danced about in the center of the gym, his blows were metered. Every hit was pulled at the last moment to ensure that any damage from the one that got through would be minimal. The way that a mentor would spar with a student, or an older sibling their younger.

That of course was the root of the problem.

Pilot teams had to depend completely and implicitly on each other. Or if they didn’t, someone had to be good enough at lying to themselves that they could compartmentalize any conflicting feelings so deep in their psyche they could forget about it when necessary.

It was possible, but not for Jesse McCree.

“Alright, I think she get’s the picture da?” Zarya called the pair of them to halt, stepping into their space and waving her own staff between them for emphasis. “Stop it before you give her any more bad ideas.”

“Hey, you asked us to go first.” Fareeha quipped, but she stepped back into line all the same.

“Da, I did.” Zarya nodded. “To show her what this isn’t supposed to look like.”

Hana once again, didn’t seem to get where she was going. “They just looked like they were fighting.”

“You weren’t looking closely enough.” Zarya explained, then added with an amused huff. “If you’d call two children playing with sticks fighting.”

Fareeha rolled her eyes and blew a barely-stifled raspberry into the air from the corner of her mouth.

McCree barked a laugh. At least now he was awake enough to manage that.

Her eyes darted back to him under the indraw of her brow. “What, Jesse?”

His amusement wasn’t dampened by Fareeha’s rebuke. “You literally jus’ went and proved her point.”

Her hackles went up immediately. The comment irked her more than McCree had thought it would but Zarya called them back to heel before he could do anything other than tilt his head and offer her a confused kind of apology.

“Quiet in peanut gallery!” Zarya swung her staff to bare in their direction, but didn’t shift her focus from Hana. “You are not sparing, you are not practicing.”

“So I have to… win the fight? I can win a fight.” Hana puffed up.

Zarya shook her head, brought her staff back over her shoulders and hung her wrists over each side. “It is not a fight at all. It is a conversation. An exchange. A real, back-and-forth give-and-take. You have to work with one another, through one another. I’ll know it when I see it.”

She cocked her chin up in a smile that made Hana copy it whether she was conscious of it or not. “Honestly, you’ll know it when you do it.”

She didn’t look like she completely understood, but she nodded along through her confusion. The tiny bit of apprehension that her incorrect guesses had given her evaporating back into the ether. “I think I get it, maybe. Let me give it a go!”

It was over almost before it started when Zarya set Hana up against Jack.

Jack did not pull his blows, not in the slightest. Which was good of course, in so far as he expected a prospective partner to be able to match him. He always had. But he pressed forward relentlessly, unwilling to give even an inch long enough for Hana to get accustomed to his style and habits enough to possibly meet him.

Hana Song was fast, her reflexes were sharp and she had an innate, careless trust in her reactions and instincts. Undoubtedly a priceless skill defending the wall against hordes of swarming kaiju broodlings.

Even more impressive and to her overwhelming credit, she did not flinch against Jack. Not once.

The five and a half foot tall nineteen year old looked up at the rigid stare of a veteran soldier, and didn’t even glance away. She just gnashed her teeth through a grin up at him.

“Come at me, scrub.”

Whether or not Jack Morrison knew or cared what the word meant, he did just that. Hana kept up as best she could, but her speed only mattered so much. Jack was older, stronger and ruthlessly efficient. That didn’t stop Hana from trying to find an opening every chance she got.

Hana was going to have bruises tomorrow thanks to that stubbornness.

Zarya stopped them.

“C’mon!” Hana panted. “I’m doing great! Lemme at him.”

Zarya shook her head and stepped forward between them once again. “You are doing very well, but this isn’t going anywhere.”

She emphasized her words and sent a glare in Jack’s direction that finished getting the rest of her point across.

McCree adjusted Zarya’s position on his mental scale one more time, notching her specifically over to ‘Angry Momma Bear’. Fareeha seemed to be doing some mental calculations of her own since she stepped closer to him and waggled her eyebrows up at him. The only way she could have expressed more obvious excitement to see a fight would have been if she’d pulled out popcorn.

For once he didn’t take her bait.

“Zarya, ya can’t tell me ya honestly thought these two were gonna be compatible.” He remembered the bruises he’d gotten from Jack during their testing. And they’d passed. “You all okay Miss Song?”

“God why can’t any of you just call me Hana!” She groaned. “Yes! I’m fine. It’s just a big stick. I woulda had him if you wouldn’t have stopped me.”

Zayra deflated a little and let out an exasperated smile. “I’m sure.”

She waved off Jack, who was waiting soldier-still but expectant nonetheless. “Yes, you’re excused Vice Commander.”

He didn’t so much as wave a goodbye.

Fareeha was, impossibly, almost worse than Jack. Once again it was a case of age, height and experience versus speed and boundless energy. The gap had been narrowed, but was still too great to bridge.

And there was something off about Fareeha herself: as if she simultaneously wasn’t trying, or maybe going easy on the newbie, but had something to prove all the same. Her focus was in the wrong place or somewhere else entirely.

“Fareeha get your head into this!” Zarya yelled from the sidelines where she and McCree stood onlooking.

The pilot sidestepped one of Hana’s vertical downswings and whipped her head around, piqued to annoyed anger. The gold in her hair chiming with the sharp jerk of the motion. “What?”

Hana took the opportunity to follow her the momentum of her dodged blow into a low crouch and swung her staff hard, in a horizontal arc this time, into the back of her distracted opponent’s legs.

A second later Fareeha was flat on her back on the matt, blinking up at the ceiling.

McCree, of course, had almost been brought to the floor as well he was so bent-over with laughter.

Zarya’s posture was better, but she her laughter was just as loud.

Fareeha cursed and swore and rolled herself back to her feet as easily as she switched between english and arabic profanities. She stalked to the racks and clapped her staff into place with enough force that something probably splintered.

“This was a mistake.” She waited just long to say one more thing. “If Morrison can butt out early I can too.”

Hana had the good sense at least to wait until she’d, predictably maybe, slammed the door on her way out. “Well… I won that one?”

That kicked all three of them back into a bit of laughter, though not quite the way it had been before Fareeha’s unceremonious exit. Zarya and McCree caught each other’s eye while Hana stood once more and bounced on her heels as she waited for one more round.

McCree shrugged and tried to roll out some of the tension that had suddenly sprung up across his shoulders and his damn left arm. Sometimes thinking about the drift alone was enough to send it into spasms.

“Sure you don’t want a bit of a break, Hana? No’one’d fault’cha for it.”

She rolled her eyes and pushed out a “pssh” sound. “Still not awake old man?”

Zarya laughed a real laugh again.

There was something there.

Whether it was just a gambler’s hopeful fallacy or something real, Hana Song and Jesse McCree were able to manage something of what Zarya was looking for- of whatever everyone in Underwatch is looking for.

Or maybe something that could be what they’re looking for. Either way at least McCree didn’t break his staff over his knee in some insane attempt to further escalate the melodrama the first two had left in the room.

Their back and forth across the training room was a chaotic jamble of styles and tactics, but it was a  mess beneath which Zarya could almost see something. But it was going to be work.

A lot of work.

She realized how stupid it was to let Jesse fight Fareeha at the start of all this.

Hana took a swing from the shoulder, out of her element and trying something she wasn’t suited to in an effort to land a real blow on partner that was too tall for her, and McCree caught the staff in his metal hand. It was a slow, obvious strike and an easy block.

But he should have followed up on the opening he’d secured with a hit of his own. He nearly did - Zarya could see the start of a shift in his elbow. Instead he simply let go and took a step back. All the fight gone out of him on a sighing exhale.

All she’d given him was another little sister.

She knew he saw that thought exactly in her eyes.

He looked down and scratched at the back of his neck with his right hand. Muttered to the floor.

“Goddamn it.”

Zarya walked forward but Hana was in quicker.

“What? What happened! We were doing really well, weren’t we?”

“Da, you were.” Zarya clapped a hand on each of their shoulders. Literally: congratulatory on one hand, conciliatory on the other. “I think we just need some more practice you two.”

She gathered up her smile and hiked it back up into place. “Hana, you need some training against taller opponents. Stronger opponents. You’re good, don’t get me wrong, but you are not so used to this thing that we do.”

Hana tapped the butt of her staff against the floor of the training room. Gave it a look like she was slightly disgusted by it. “I can’t say that I expected to be fighting with sticks when I finally got to come to Gibraltar.”

“We will start some regular trainings you and I. If you can hold your own against me, you can hold your own against Brokeback Mountain over here.” Zarya dropped her hand from McCree’s shoulder and elbowed him in the side.

“Brokeback Mountain? Ugh.” Hana groaned comically. “I didn’t even think of that one!”

McCree chucked. “Save it fr’next time then?”

“You know it! Just you wait!”

“Why don’t you go and clean up, Hana? You’ve already had quite a workout.” Zarya suggested.

“Yeah… maybe I should. I’m starving too! And maybe we could get started on some of that training later?” She asked, rolling her obvious exertion just as easily back into excitement.

“I’ll pencil you in.” Zarya replied.

“Awesome! See ya soon and then I’ll make sure to get you on your ass next time for sure!” She called back over her shoulder at McCree as she left.

His brain automatically supplied him the gut reaction of ‘That a promise?’ But he swallowed it down and watched Hana go with a silent wave. It made him want to take a shower more than his continual exhaustion and slight sweat both. He sighed and pulled his hat off of his head.

“She’s so fuckin’ little, Zarya. How the hell am I s’pose to make this work?”

“She’s not a child Jesse.” Zarya corrected harshly. “She wouldn’t be here if she were.”

“I know that… Shit, that’s not what I-” He ran his hand over his eyes this time. “I saw her stats from the wall, and goddamn I sure as hell know what happened to Seoul and the rest’a her country. Anyone who can pick theirself up after that’s gotta warrior inside’a them if I ever saw one. Even iff’in she’s just got a smaller one.”

He didn’t seem to be able to quite find the right way to explain himself.

The exact words came to him as soon as he let his mind go the least bit blank. “Man, how’d the hell did Reyes manage this with me?”

Zarya paused.

“He put the fear of the devil into you Jesse and you damn near worshiped the man. You would have done anything he asked of you.”

McCree’s hand fell from his face and traced over the juncture of flesh and metal at his left arm.

“I’m thinkin’ I just about did.”

“Jesse..”

He continued on quickly. “Well then how’d the hell the Shimada’s manage it? The younger one was all new-school free spirit and the older brother was a stick-up-the-ass traditionalist if ever there was one… from what I heardov’um.”

Zarya shrugged, a slow tired gesture. “I don’t know, Jesse. It’s not as if the Shimada brothers are around to ask.”

“One of them might be.”

Hana Song peaked back from around the cracked door of the training room.

Zarya and McCree both gaped.

“What, you really thought I’d leave you two alone to talk about me like that? Please.” She waved herself in. “And I guess it’s a lucky thing I was. Let me tell you some of the rumors I heard in China…”

 

* * *

  
The door closed automatically behind Dr. Zeigler, the quiet mechanics barely whirring even a soft and well-engineered sigh. Considering how desperately her charge needed sleep, she found herself even more grateful for the technology in her lab than she normally was.

She wasn’t surprised to see the Commander waiting at her desk upon her return.

Angela offered him a genuine, if tired, smile as she approached and the tension immediately bled out of him. It was refreshing to be able to offer him good news.

“She’s doing alright then?” Winston asked, almost tentatively. Some part of him ever wary and apprehensive for bad news.

“Fine.” She pushed the smile brighter up into her cheeks. “Better since you came to see her last night. That was very kind of you.”

“Angela, I am in Command of Underwatch.” He almost managed to say the title like didn’t crush a little more each day under its weight. “It is my job to make sure that all of my pilots are taken care of.”

She didn’t comment on the obvious overreach of that description. The sentiment struck an easy chord with her, she wouldn’t have remained with Underwatch this long if it didn’t. She reached past him to downsize the program she had been fiddling with to run it’s exploratory parameters in the background so she could give him her full attention.

The bags under his eyes are more obvious than the slouch his his stature.

“Did you get any sleep last night, Commander?”

“A few hours.”

It was a lie, but she let him have it.

Angela wouldn’t have been able to question him at any length anyway. Whatever was left of their conversation was cut off with a trilling sound from one of her many monitors. She answered the call and patched Zarya through: the strong jaw and the bright pink hair blown up onto the larger screens.

“Good Afternoon Dr. Zeigler and-” Her focus shifted just a half second behind the audio feed of her voice. “Commander, how convenient!”

“Indeed.” Angela wiggled her fingers in a wave, unable to keep the upswing of excitement out of her actions or her voice. “Are you calling to update us on compatibility training?”

“Da! Of course. I have quite a bit of interesting updates.” Zarya waved a casual salute in response.

Winston leaned in. “That sounds promising.”

“Promising is… a good way to put it.” Zarya began.

She gave them the obvious news first, rolled out the predictable bad news before she got to the meatier portion. Hana and Jack were immiscible as oil and water, no surprise there. Less surprising still that Morrison had left for other business in almost the same breath. The failure with Fareeha had been predictable, though the ensuing fallout had not been.

Both and Angela and Winston put a mental pin in that bit, though each independently of the other and for entirely different reasons.

Zarya rolled straight onto her summary of Hana and McCree without changing her predicate.

“There is serious potential there. If Hana can learn hold her own against him in training, we should be able to smash through the walls he’s got up in his head.” Was her succinct assessment.

“I thought you said there was good news, Zarya.” Winston frowned, in confusion rather than disappointment. He hoped. “We need pilots: we need options.”

“Da. I haven’t gotten to the best news yet. This is also courtesy of Hana, if you’re curious. Which you will be.” She leaned closer to the monitor.

“Hanzo Shimada is alive.”

Winston and Angela both drew in closer to the screen, almost by reflex. Dr. Zeigler managed to speak first, ever the rational scientist .

“We have to assume that by procedure, or course Zarya. He’s only been declared MIA since Hanamura. It was Genji who was-”

Zarya raised a finger, but it was more likely the look on her face that called the doctor to heel. “There are numerous reports from the Chinese that a man matching his description has been spotted making regular visits to a hospital in the Himalayan Mountain inland safe zone - almost Nepal. ”

It was Dr. Zeigler’s turn to look confused, her focus shifting to something other than Zarya’s call screen. Winston took the opportunity.

“This truly is good news! Commend Miss Song on my behalf. I’ll enquire with Mei and see if she might know anything about his whereabouts. If we can contact him and extend an invitation-”

“Not so fast Commander, Hana did mention that he’s in some sort of disguise. He doesn’t have a permanent residence or even a name. The only constant is the patient he seems to come in to check up on.” She shrugged her hands up into the frame of the monitor “Apparently he’s gone so far as to break in and out of the hospital room of this John Doe coma patient to avoid as much detection as possible.”

“So he’s what, gone rogue? This job gets stranger and stranger. If he’s in hiding then why risk breaking into a hospital of all places?” Winston sagged somewhat, dragging his hand across his face underneath his glasses. “How do we convince an ex-pilot on the run to… turn himself into us? What the hell can we offer to a man like that?”

Dr. Zeigler cleared her throat with a demure ‘ahem’.

She motioned to the screen she had been working on previously, opened the program she had downsized. Layers and and layers of incomprehensible coding filtered up, headed only with the title ‘Zenyatta Program’.

She turned from the monitor to the Commander.

“I think I may have an idea about that.”

It takes Hanzo Shimada two days to make the arrangements to move his brother’s body.

 

It’s storming when they arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... uh... The ORIGINAL intent was to have Chapter 1 be this monster introductory frankenblob of words and introduction, then TRIM down the successive chapters to get to the point. That obviously didn't happen? I'm not really sorry one bit because I'm having way too much fun writting the individual schemes and dramas and struggles of the dysfunctional little found-family that is Overwatch (or UNDERwatch in this case, but that's semantics). HEY! At least Hanzo's full name gets dropped and he's even in this chapter. Kind of.
> 
> As with the first chapter, sksNinja is my go-to copilot for this fic. It wouldn't exist AT ALL in anyway without her support (she feeds me too sometimes, and shekeeps a stock of beer treats for me at her place). This chapter was also beta'd by the wonderful Gypsii, who hasn't blocked me on twitter yet even though I bug her all the time for advice and commentary. I love you both and all the mistakes left in this are mine. It's hard to tappity-type with raptor claws.
> 
> One more thing - if you're looking for updates on this fic or just wanna talk about Pac Rim at all, I'm on tumblr as Velolciraptor and twitter @tappytoeclaws. Mostly I just bitch about how I SHOULD be writting, but I mean, you're welcome to prod my ass back into gear if you want.

**Author's Note:**

> A while back I was griping to some friends that I hadn't been able to find any Overwatch/Pacific Rim Crossover fics... I couldn't find one so I made my own. I was also kind of looking for an excuse to get into this fandom and play with all of you because you all seem like the cool kids and I just want to be a part of something special! Pacific Rim is one of my favorite things in ever so I'm stoked as hell. There's one nearly-direct Evangelion allusion in here too... Cookie or something to someone who finds it.
> 
> I'm on twitter and tumblr and I gripe and complain and bitch A LOT when I'm writting so check me out over on one of those if you want to witness my garbage "process" heavily emphasized quotes there or poke me to get my ass back to work.
> 
> Finally, if you enjoyed this you should ALL go thank sksNinja for the fact it exists. She's been my alpha & beta reader for this as well as the best fandom co-pilot anyone could ask for. She also dragged me into this fandom. If you hate it, feel free to tell her I'm her fault too.


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